Capax Infiniti
by IJX
Summary: Fifteen years after the end of the IZ series, Zim struggles to maintain his cover and elicits the help of a human as he moves out of the reconnaissance phase of his mission.
1. Chapter 1

**Capax Infiniti**

A/N: I've taken some poetic license with regard to Zim's height. For the purposes of this story, indeed he is incredibly short relative to other Irkens but not the child-sized height from the series. This is probably the one major deviation at this point.

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

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**Chapter 1**

The pounding rush of his Irken blood as it raced to his limbs, powering his body forward, mirrored the clack of Zims boots against the pavement. He could hear his pursuers behind him, but he dared not risk a glance in their direction. Even the smallest interruption in his escape could cost him the invaluable variable of time.

Evading Dib's attempts at exposing him had been not only successful but a mere youngster's game. A joke. He derived some modicum of joy out of seeing the human spend the better part of a decade struggling to expose him. Naturally, the mere suggestion that such an insubstantial creature from this pathetically ignorant planet could thwart him, the great Invader Zim of Irk, was an amusement that served only to ease the monotonous boredom of reconnaissance work.

Now the time for jest and jokes even in the least eventful of moments had passed. Zim had been spotted without his disguise by what he discerned to be military agents, tipped off by some despicable anonymous informant, and now he tried desperately to elude them. He seriously considered the possibility that Dib could be the catalyst behind their discovery, but the idea was ultimately dismissed. Dib had sufficient time to disrobe him of his privacy over the many years Zim spent infiltrating their society. The overenthusiastic young paranormal researcher's constant and irritating presence in his life was evidence enough of his incompetence; any worthy opponent would have posed a greater threat given such prolonged contact.

Dib's reputation as a paranormal zealot began to precede him as he grew into a young man, obsessed with his mysterious mysteries or... whatever. He was deluded, believing his influence within his paranormal organization posed a real threat to Zim's noble cause. Dib was no more menacing to Zim than the ancient crone of a teacher from the first years on Earth he spent disguised as a child in a classroom. Of course, that infantile disguise was a temporary approach to what ultimately became a long-term and labyrinthine reconnaissance mission. He was inching closer to victory as he worked his way through intelligence on Earth's highest government agencies and military forces, but there was still much left to learn if his invasion was to be a flawless success.

Flawless indeed. Given enough time and privacy to chart the course of his incursion, it would be, without question, the most elegantly immaculate invasion in Irken history. Enough, perhaps, even to elevate his status regardless of stature and redeem him in the eyes of the Almighty Tallest. He feigned flippancy with regard to his banishment, but in truth it stung his pride profoundly and had sullied his reputation into utter ruin. The wretched _Fast Food Drone_ programming of his invaluable PAK in lieu of his rightful Invader status was a constant bitter reminder. He had no choice but to correct the past foolishness which besmeared his name by bringing home to Irk what would be a most beautiful victory. Indeed it would bring him great pleasure to rain death and destruction down upon the humans, these creatures whose disgusting displays of cultural self-flagellation had left him just itching to put them in their place.

Now that his success was so close he could almost feel a ghost of its presence preceding it, he had made this one dreadful mistake that could easily lead to his downfall. He knew that they could not afford any further disruption; he had fallen desperately behind in his mission and they had consistently and constantly risked exposure. Thus, Zim had been a fool to follow GIR as his imbecile companion slipped out of their headquarters at night, chasing after a small Earth animal with his characteristically moronic enthusiasm.

_I'mma pet the bunny! Hee hee heeeeeeee! Bye!_

_GIR! No, get BACK here!!_

Despite Zim's frequent irritation over GIR's manic fits, he admitted only to himself that he had developed a kind of odd if distant affection for the robot over their years spent on Earth. GIR proved himself useful and loyal in the most dire of circumstances despite his flaws, and that was enough to keep him around.

Tonight, his tolerance for GIR's flighty behavior and Zim's own haughty arrogance caught up with him. _They_ had been waiting for him. Zim found Earth films' tendency to portray government agencies as stoic Men in Black humorously moronic. As though any serious threat to a sophisticated race like the Irken would consist of these transparently stiff caricatures in dark suits and sunglasses. Hah. No, the real thing was almost as undetectable as Zim himself these days, or at least since he decided to refine his disguise. He grudgingly admitted that these foes were fairly formidable, even if not as subtle or intelligent as Zim himself. After all, he had grown into a capable Irken warrior.

Nevertheless, he was a fool. A fool to believe that they would be safe, that no one would dare monitor his headquarters at 3:00 AM, that there was no way there would still be blind spots in his preliminary detection system despite frequent fine tuning. These things did not cross Zim's mind as GIR chased his little furry friend across the front lawn. GIR, without his canine disguise, fled across the street in hot pursuit of the object of his affection, tinny giggles filling the previously silent night air, metallic feet clanging against the pavement.

"GIR!" Zim hissed out his words, not wanting to wake the entire neighborhood and alert them to their activities. "OBEY me! Return at once!"

Zim believed that it would take no more than five minutes at most to drag GIR unwillingly back into the house for a stern reprimand. He had intended to rush outside, grab GIR and thrust him back into their lair. It was the dead of night and his simpleton neighbors would be blissfully ignorant in their drooling slumber. It was not GIR's mania but Zim's own blind hubris that had exposed him. As the quiet click of two guns cocking echoed across the street and the bright beam of a flashlight suddenly flooded his sensitive vision, he raised his gloved arm to shield his red eyes. At once he understood what was happening and cursed himself for his foolishness.

Zim wasted no time. He turned around, intent on returning to his headquarters a mere hundred feet behind him so that he could access his myriad Irken resources beneath the surface. Unfortunately, two of his human aggressors stood between him and his sanctuary; if he wished to call no attention to himself, he had no choice but to run.

Zim thanked the gods for small favors in the form of the shadowy cover of night. Few humans scampered in the streets in these wee hours of the morning and the darkness provided endless black nooks and crannies into which he could duck in an attempt to evade the military agents. Were he to successfully lose them, he knew he would have to call upon GIR to send the Voot Cruiser to him and could only hope his servant would pull himself together long enough to see them through this unfortunately dire situation. He dared not burden himself with thoughts of how well GIR might be holding up in the face of the agents who had inevitably stayed behind to infiltrate his home. Zim's attention must be focused on evading the humans on his tail.

And so he ran. He ran tirelessly, darting behind buildings, turning sharp corners and sliding into narrow passageways that his lithe Irken body could maneuver far better than the large male humans behind him. So far so good, but he could only manage this level of physical strain for so long and the humans appeared not to be falling as far behind as he would have liked. He had to find some way to lose them and some place to hide.

"STOP!" one of the men shouted, his voice too close for comfort. "You will not be harmed!"

"Heh. Bullshit," Zim muttered. He risked electronic detection and grabbed the communication piece as it emerged from his PAK. "GIR!"

"Yes, master!" the tinny voice replied in a delightfully cheerful tone.

"I need you to track my location while I'm on the move and send the Voot Cruiser to me. Keep the humans from infiltrating headquarters for as long as you can! I'll contact you with further instructions."

"YES, MASTER," GIR replied with the frightful competence he occasionally displayed. Zim felt confident that GIR would follow through, although that confidence was tainted with the knowledge that GIR would most likely become sidetracked in the process and thus delay the arrival of the Voot. His legs were starting to give out on him; there was no time for this. He had to find a place to hide.

It dawned on him that he could threaten a subservient human into providing him with a sufficient hiding place and then dispose of the meatbag after the fact, but they were so few and far between in these early hours before the sun rose that it seemed unlikely. He was still in a residential area; risking exposure or entrapment in the matrix of the city would be unwise. Any human encountering him without his disguise would be likely to scream in horror at his vaguely insectile red eyes and antennae, if not his green skin. While the idea of horrifying random passersby pleased the crueler corners of his nature, he wasn't keen on the idea of drawing additional attention to himself that might alert the agents to his location. He could still detect their presence on his trail through the subtle vibrations on the pavement, drawing ever closer by the minute.

He ran toward an intersection and intended to cut through the back yard of one of the houses on the Southeast corner to see what dark places he could use to shield himself from their view, what twists and turns he could take to lose them. Just as he rounded the corner of the house's landscaping, he saw a human leaving the corner house and he could only assume she was moving toward a car parked on the side of the road. She was utterly alone and there were no other people to witness him accosting her in the dark. Yes, a female would serve his purposes nicely. Should he need to execute her, the human authorities would easily assume that she was the victim of an attack by a sexual predator. Perfect. His reconnaissance of human culture prepared him well for this opportunity.

He had little time. Zim crept silently across the yard and hid behind the driver's side of the vehicle. As the woman made her way around the vehicle toward the driver's side, pulling her keys from her jacket and putting the car key into the lock, Zim slithered gracefully, silently around behind her, slipping one gloved hand tightly over her mouth, while the other effortlessly grabbed an electrical weapon from his PAK and jabbed it roughly against the side of her torso. The entire sequence of movements seemed to occur within a split second and shocked the woman completely. Of all neighborhoods, this was the last in which she would have anticipated an assault.

She remained quiet and tried to remember everything she'd heard about what you're supposed to do when you were assaulted in the dark. How many email forwards had she been inundated with over the years with just such instructions? Damn it.

"Scream and I'll murder you," Zim hissed into her ear. He didn't have time to mask the inhuman quality of his voice. Time was of the essence. He felt her stiffen under his grip and it was delicious. He could practically smell her fear and it did wonderful things for his Machiavellian ego. But this was not the time to revel in such things.

"We're going to get into the car and you're going to drive. You will make no sudden movements and both hands will remain on the steering wheel where I can see them. If I suspect for even for a moment that you might be contemplating your escape, I will kill you without hesitation. Do not make the mistake of doubting my sincerity. Do you understand?"

The woman hesitated and then nodded quickly, shuddering within his hold. Her fear was intoxicating. How difficult it was for Zim not to pause and enjoy the moment. It was evident that she thought he was going to murder her for some grotesque human pleasure and the power he felt moved him. Quite frankly, it aroused him the way only dominating through fear could. He was born with a thirst for sadism.

"Good. We're going to move to the passenger's side and you will enter first. You will crawl into the driver's seat and I will electrocute you if you attempt to do anything other than sit and start the car," Zim hissed once again, menacingly, biting off each word to intensify her fear. Even if he couldn't prolong the moment, he could at least play with her emotions. He so rarely had the opportunity to unabashedly taunt these pathetic creatures.

He moved quickly around the car, sensing that the agents were drawing closer. "Unlock the door," he ordered.

She lifted her empty left hand with her open palm facing forward while her right hand inserted the key into the lock and opened the door.

"Good," Zim said. "Get in." He shoved her into the vehicle while jabbing her in the side with the electric weapon. He released his grip on her mouth so that she could do as he commanded. He didn't want to have to kill her until her usefulness had been exhausted, but he would not hesitate to electrocute her violently if she tried anything or resisted him.

The woman slid into the driver's seat after a few clumsy movements over the stick of the car, and Zim sat down. She placed her hands on the steering wheel as instructed. The woman did not look at him, but asked tentatively, "Where are we going?"

"JUST DRIVE, HUMAN!" Zim bellowed and charged his weapon. Arcs of electricity jumped from one end of the device to the other as he threatened her face with it. The woman looked at him fearfully. Her expression was a contorted mess as her brain grappled to process what she was seeing, and Zim's frustration was building as he anticipated the arrival of the agents. "I don't have TIME for your infantile confusion! GO!!"

"Okay!" the woman shouted as she frantically turned the key in the ignition and drove away from the house, speeding away.

As they raced into the dark, Zim pointed the weapon at the woman's torso once again, poking her deep beneath her ribcage, enjoying the wince of pain he saw flicker across her face. "Your usefulness is evident at this point, but I will make life thoroughly unpleasant for you if you do not continue to cooperate. You must hide me. You are undoubtedly more familiar with the inner workings of this city than I am despite my superior intelligence, so you will use what meager amount of intelligence _you_ might possess to locate a suitable place for me to rest and collect my thoughts without being detected. Your life depends upon your success."

The woman was silent; she simply drove. Zim was pleased and attributed her cooperation to his superior intimidation tactics. While riding, he decided to try to contact his robot.

"GIR!" Zim shouted.

Nothing.

"GIR!! Answer your master!"

He waited. This time there was a response in the form of intermittent garbled noise and brief bursts of GIR's metallic voice. This lasted for roughly ten seconds.

"GIR! I can't make out what youre saying, GIR! Have you sent the Voot?!"

Silence. Nothing.

"DAMN IT!" Zim punched the glove compartment with his free hand and then bellowed out in pain. Breathing heavily, he stopped himself from throwing a theatrical fit. He had to maintain control of the situation despite the unknown status of his headquarters. There was nothing he could do until he secured a private location for transmission and was certain that he had lost the agents.

By now he sensed that they had fallen behind, but he couldn't be sure.

He sulked back in the seat and glanced at the woman, keeping his weapon trained on her abdomen. She drove and kept her gaze aimed directly forward, tiny beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. He did take perverse pleasure in seeing her discomfort, but he had to be certain she would adequately serve her purpose.

"Tell me where you are taking me, _human_," Zim demanded. He seemed incapable of speaking the word without a guttural lurch of disgust.

The woman flicked her eye toward him briefly but did not turn her head. She kept it firmly toward the road, knowing very well that if she looked at the thing in her passenger's seat directly again she would be unable to turn away. In horror or fascination, she wasn't sure. And of course, it would then kill her for failing to do its bidding. She had no interest in losing her life at twenty-six.

"My home," she said, attempting to keep her voice from shaking. She wanted to remain as confident and calm as a situation like this would allow. She needed her wits about her if she was going to come out of this alive.

"Is this place sufficient to keep me hidden?!" Zim loudly demanded, balling his free hand into a fist and slamming it against the glove box. "Failure will lead to an unpleasant death for you, HUMAN!!" He was beginning to feel and sound desperate, so he shut his mouth and forced himself to try to calm down. He could not allow thoughts of failure to creep into his mind, and especially not images of being dissected at the hands of human vermin. Focus. Focus on the task at hand.

She licked her lips; they had become dry and chapped in her alarm, but she too was determined to remain calm. "Yes," she said, clearing her throat. "I believe it is. It's one of a few hundred units in a residential quarter of the city. Even if someone knew you were in the vicinity, it would take a very long time to search every unit."

"Good," Zim said, calming down. "Get there quickly."

There was no need for his urging; they had arrived. She had taken the freeway loop that cut their travel time in half, despite the fact that surface streets would have allowed them to remain more adequately hidden. After all, no matter how fascinating a turn her night had taken, she was only invested in this creature's concealment insofar as it would keep her alive. She pulled the vehicle into a crowded but dilapidated parking lot next to her apartment building. Turning the engine off, she slowly released the steering wheel and kept her hands in the air, palms open and forward, keeping her gaze aimed at the windshield.

"We're here," she said.

"You're going to exit the vehicle and I'm going to follow. You will not run. You will not shout. You will do nothing but walk slowly inside the building. Do anything else and I will kill you," Zim threatened. "And I _will_ enjoy it."

He was tempted to kill her the moment they entered her residence, but he would gauge her usefulness once he collected his thoughts. She could prove to be a valuable resource or an unnecessary nuisance.

She opened the car door and slowly slid her legs out, standing up, keeping her open hands raised in front of her. As Zim was crawling out of the car behind her, she debated her next actions. She swallowed nervously and said, "I'm going to put my hands down. If anyone sees me like this, they'll know I'm in trouble."

Zim was surprised at this and paused for only the briefest moment, raising the muscle in his forehead that, were he human, would have raised his eyebrow. In fact he had none, but the effect was the same. This female monkey thing was either smart enough to know that her best chance of survival was to cooperate, or so abysmally stupid that she was helping her aggressor out of sheer idiocy. "Yes," Zim said. "Very well."

He held his weapon in his left hand and jabbed her with it beneath her ribcage once again. She grimaced and snapped at him, "Is that really necessary?!"

He narrowed his eyes and jabbed her again, harder this time, sliding his right arm around her waist under her jacket. He now stood immediately behind her, embracing her from behind. What any passersby would not be able to see is that he dug the three fingers on his right hand into her flesh. "Do not cross me, _human_," he hissed into her left hear, the word escaping his lips as though it tasted bitter in his mouth. "You've been wise to obey me. Do _not_ start making mistakes now." His fingers grabbed at something vital deep within her body and she doubled over in pain, clenching her teeth to keep herself from crying out. She could feel her anger and fear rise simultaneously and began to wonder if she might be able to exact revenge on the sadistic green fucker for doing this to her.

"Walk," he ordered, keeping his arm around her while shoving her forward. She realized he was doing this to shield others' view of him. If they did not look closely, someone might think he was embracing her like a lover aiding her after they'd had too much wine. He was, after all, rather slender and short at only 5'4", a mere inch taller than she was, and therefore easily hidden by her frame despite her own short stature.

_Those grey aliens were always rumored to be little,_ she mused as she walked.

Alien? Is that what it was? She had no idea. For all she knew, it could be a human being from another dimension or some demon risen from the bowels of a hell she hadn't believed in. Pretty much everything she was sure of was flying out the window right now.

"We have to walk up the stairs," she said quietly to him as they approached a stairwell. "Four flights."

Zim did not answer but simply jabbed her in the ribcage again, moving her forward. In truth he was glad she was keeping him abreast of her next move, but he had to keep her intimidated and uncomfortable if he was to remain in control. Lord over them with fear, that was the most effective way to do it. He continually pushed the weapon into her abdomen as they moved fluidly up the stairs together, the darkness of the stairwell and the night keeping them shielded from view. An occasional person walked by on the floors below as they ascended, but no one paid them any mind.

"This floor," she said as they topped the fourth flight of stairs. She walked toward the sixth door on the right and unlocked it. As she was about to open the door, Zim used his right hand, the one gripping her organs, to flip her around to face him, pinning her back against the door. She had no choice but to look at him directly as he grabbed her face under her chin with his right hand and moved his own face within inches of hers. She could smell the faint scent of something familiar... something not unpleasant but unidentifiable. He gripped her face hard and flicked a switch on his weapon with one of the fingers of his left hand before aiming it inches from her temple. A new scent dominated her senses. Ozone. She guessed he increased the strength of his weapon.

"Listen to me," he growled as he narrowed his red eyes and grinned menacingly. She caught more than a mere glimpse of the incredibly sharp, clean teeth in his mouth as he spoke. She had no idea if the creature ate people, but she prayed it was a vegetarian. Its grip was also surprisingly strong around her chin, neck and face. There was unbelievable hidden strength in the creature's small frame.

"Make no attempts to alert anyone of my presence here," he said. "Keep yourself well within view unless I order otherwise, and make no sudden movements. While death by electrocution would be immeasurably unpleasant for you, I can think of a hundred other slow deaths that would leave you begging to be let into the gates of Hell for some _small_ reprieve."

She struggled not to let her green eyes fill with tears, her body tremble or her fear to overcome her and leave her an unconscious heap in the doorway. He could see her otherwise pretty features contort under her discomfort and he tried to ignore the giddy rush of sadistic joy.

She spoke through clenched teeth with labored breathing as the tenacity of his grip had strengthened during his little speech, threatening to crush her windpipe. "I understand," she struggled to say.

He let go of her and violently spun her around. At once he decreased the strength of the electric weapon, jabbing it back into her now bruised ribs and reaching past her to grab the doorknob himself now that the door was unlocked. "Keep your hands where I can see them again," he said, breathing into her ear. There was that familiar scent again. It was his breath and maybe even his skin. Again, it wasn't unpleasant, but it was a scent she never would have associated with breath or... _demons_, or whatever he was, and she couldn't quite place its familiarity.

She raised her hands up in front of her again, palms open. As he turned the knob and opened the door, they walked forward together in a ballet of heightened senses and tingling nerves. One feared for her life, the other for his mission. Both were determined to survive.

"Turn on the light," he commanded as he closed the door behind them and locked the deadbolt.

She raised the open palm of her right hand and started to reach toward the light switch, but changed her mind. She needed to be clever if she was going to get out of this and decided to make a bold move in a sign of subservience to a creature whose superiority complex clearly reigned his behavior. She whispered, "It's here," and slowly reached down to his right hand, touched his gloved wrist and then delicately held it in her fingers. She tried to keep her touch light so that he would not feel threatened or think that she was trying to thwart him in any way, but all the same she felt the creature stiffen under her touch.

She quickly took her hand away and held her palm up in submission. He moved his weapon and heard a click followed by the scent of ozone again. "DO NOT--" he began to threaten, but she interrupted him.

"...it's here," she said, taking his wrist gently and quickly moving his hand toward the wall where the light switch was. While she did this, he jabbed the weapon into her side and quickly electrocuted her. The sensation was excruciating as the shock traveled down the length of her body and made her teeth clench together uncontrollably. She thought her jaw would shatter.

She screamed in pain, doubling over and falling to the floor, tears filling her eyes. It was a stupid thing for her to have done but she had to make this creature believe she would not try to get away and would, in fact, help him. It was her only chance of survival. She would have to choose her risks more wisely.

Zim touched her only briefly with the device, but he knew the effect on her system would be profound. When she touched him, he was absolutely certain she was attempting some sniveling human trickery or to prepare to run away like a scuttling cockroach. He was taken by surprise when his hand merely fell upon the light switch. Her actions puzzled him and made him more uncomfortable than had she attempted escape. Nevertheless, sudden movements were _unacceptable!_

Flipping on the light, he glanced down at his captive and saw her clutching her left side with her right hand, her left hand raised, palm open. A gesture of surrender. _"Get up_," he sneered. "And let that remind you why you should not make any sudden movements."

When she did not get up, he grabbed her arm and started to roughly yank her to her feet. He eased up a little and helped her gently, for no other reason than knowing that her system was incapable of moving quickly after such an onslaught of electrical current. When she was more or less standing, albeit slightly hunched over and panting, he pushed her against the wall of her apartment's foyer. This time, he neither gripped her face nor jabbed her with the weapon, but he stood close to her, face once again inches from hers.

She was not looking him in the eye and he could sense the red heat of her fury pouring off of her in waves.

"Look at me," he demanded, his solid red eyes fixated on her face. She flicked her gaze toward him, her expression stern and for a moment, fearless. She had the look of a wild animal who would gladly rip apart his face were she given an inch to move. A drop of red blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth.

Zim kept his eyes fixated on hers, faces inches apart, and moved his hand toward her face. He slowly wiped the trickle of blood away with his gloved finger, pressing hard against her skin while spreading the red liquid across her chin. He breathed menacingly into her face and said, "You bit your tongue. Compose yourself _immediately_ and follow me." Pausing to wipe the finger of his glove on her shirt, he turned and walked into the main room of the apartment.

She tried desperately to hold onto her fury, to let it be the lifeline that centered her, kept her thoughts collected and her mind focused. Yet the moment the creature turned his back to her, she felt herself unravel internally, fighting the urge to collapse to the floor in a sobbing heap. She wasn't the type to fall apart easily, but this was shaping up to be the most frightening day of her life. She didn't know if she'd live to see the sun rise.

She followed him into her living room and saw that he was already sitting on her couch with various unfamiliar instruments spread out on the table. She quietly moved toward the couch and stood near the opposite end from where he was sitting, wanting to avoid moving within his reach but trying to remain in sight.

They remained like that for a few minutes, her staring at him while he worked. He had taken something out of the oblong thing on his back and was messing with it. Nothing she was looking at was familiar. Not the creature, not his instruments. She felt like a stranger in a strange land, although that description fit the figure sitting before her far better. What was it? Its frame was human_oid_, but obviously unlike any human she'd ever seen.

"Sit down," Zim said firmly, without taking his eyes from the instruments he was fiddling with. "You're making me nervous standing there."

She was startled out of her thoughts and promptly sat down on the couch, still remaining on the far end. Her ribcage throbbed. Obviously, he had bruised it with his damn... space taser, or whatever it was. She tore her eyes away from the strange sight in her living room and glanced at her side, touching it gingerly in several places to assess the damage. She didn't think anything was broken, which was good. She may have to run later and it would be far more difficult with a set of broken ribs. She could probably deal with bruises, despite the pain.

Her mouth tasted metallic thanks to having bitten her tongue. That demonic asshole had to humiliate her further by wiping its finger on her shirt, didnt it? Fuck him. Or it. Whatever.

She licked her dry lips. On top of everything else, she felt like her throat and mouth were coated in cotton. Water would be good. She shifted in her seat a little, glanced at the creature and said, "I need water. Can I get some for you?"

Only now did Zim pause in his work. He grabbed a sharp tool out of his PAK and with one swift movement, the tool flew a fraction of an inch past her body and stuck out of the arm of the couch, vibrating. She looked at it, utterly stunned. Had she merely shifted her weight during its brief flight, it would have stabbed her in the arm.

As the woman turned to look at Zim incredulously, she discovered him already practically on top of her. He grabbed her neck powerfully and hissed, "Do NOT touch me with your LIQUID. I will RIP YOUR EYES FROM YOUR HEAD and feed them to you if you allow so much as a trickle of water to touch my skin! Keep the vile stuff away from me at all costs if you value your life, you filthy sack of _human waste_." He issued a quiet grumble from the depths of his throat that could almost qualify as a growl, although it was unlike anything she had ever heard before, both subtle and horrifyingly menacing. He simply remained there, lording over her with those red eyes piercing her own as if to burn his command into her retinas.

The woman slowly raised her hand and placed it very gently on Zim's wrist. He was not strangling her, but she knew that he could crush her windpipe easily. She said nothing and did not struggle, but simply looked him in the eye. She desperately fought to stay composed, but after about thirty seconds of sitting there on the couch with this alien creature's hand threatening to crush her windpipe, his blazing red eyes and sharp teeth in her face, a couple of tears escaped her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

They ran down her face and their remnants met their end on Zim's gloved hand. He released her and she gasped for air, desperate to fill her lungs completely. She managed to choke out the words, "I meant no harm." She had to stifle a hearty "fuck you."

Zim reached across her and grabbed the instrument sticking out of the arm of the couch, pointed it at her throat and scowled. "When I need your assistance, I'll ask for it, _human_. Go get your _water_." He sat up and returned to work.

As Zim worked to enhance the communication device from his PAK, he thought about how curious it was that of all humans, he would accost one who would end up puzzling him more than any other he had thus far encountered. Granted, he had very little prolonged contact with any one human and preferred it that way, with perhaps the exception of Dib, but he had not expected to be met with so little resistance from his captive. He was powerful and threatening; he would have anticipated more groveling, begging and pure frozen fear in the face of impending doom. These were the reactions he was accustomed to. As an Irken Invader, there was little else to be expected when an inferior species was in his presence.

The human female feared him, to be sure, but he had to admit that her attempts to remain calm were a nobler reaction than most members of her species could muster. In particular was her apparent ease in the presence of a species clearly alien to her planet. She was obviously shocked by his existence and appearance in her life, but the rapid-fire panicked inquiry into his origin which he had encountered with past humans was completely absent here. And now she was offering him _refreshment_? Bizarre.

The woman returned with her water and stood next to the couch, looking outside. The window's blinds had been open all night and now the morning sun was beginning to rise. She watched it as she sipped her water, her eyes bloodshot. She occasionally sniffed; she obviously had herself a little cry in the kitchen.

He paused and looked at her. He would later have to be sure that she did not sneak any utensils or instruments into her clothing, but a cursory glance suggested she had not. God, humans were so pathetic, leaking from every orifice.

She realized he was looking at her and she quickly moved to sit down on the couch, remembering his earlier order to be seated. Zim remained hunched over his work on the edge of the couch, but he watched her as she moved. She seemed to refuse to look in his direction, although her expression was unreadable. Distant, even, as she watched the sun rise. She was intentionally avoiding his gaze.

He scrutinized her, once again raising his non-existent eyebrow, and then sat up a bit, holding an instrument in his hand (fortunately for her, this one was blunt). He sat there for a moment, hands resting on his legs, looking at her. Under his intense stare, she finally turned her head to look at him, calmly holding her now half empty glass of ice water between the palms of her hands in her lap.

"You're staring at me," she dared.

Despite her compliance thus far, she was obviously a naturally spirited personality to dare say such a thing under these circumstances. Oddly enough, he actually found himself preferring this to the typical sniveling, groveling pathetic display of submission that usually served to validate his inflated ego.

He pointed his instrument at her in a benign gesture. "You don't seem too shocked that there's an alien in your living room."

This obviously flustered her a little, although in anger or surprise he couldn't tell. Color simply rose to her cheeks as she stiffened and looked back toward the sunrise. "So, is that what you are, then?" she asked.

"Yes," Zim said simply, and turned back to his work.

They sat there like that for awhile, she watching the sunrise while he worked. The only sounds in the apartment were the occasional clink of ice in her glass as it melted and the various clanging noises Zim made as he worked on his communication device. A thousand thoughts floated in and out of the woman's head as her brain attempted to factor this new information into her worldview. Her _universe_ view, she supposed.

She shifted a little and silently watched him work, trying to accept what she was seeing. An alien. In her living room. _Working_ in her living room. On _her_ couch. Right next to the photo of her baby niece. In the same room where she did her pilates workout in the evenings. Sitting in the same spot where she had so glamorously eaten pizza for dinner last night while watching Grey's Anatomy.

The sun was now fully risen, its rays illuminating the room in delicate shades of orange and yellow. When he wasn't snarling in her face and electrocuting her, this alien didn't look quiet so fearsome. He was intensely focused on his work, so she felt she could study him; after all, she was naturally curious and this was an _alien_. Apparently. In _her_ living room. His skin was green, but it was actually a fairly pleasant light shade of green and appeared both smooth and flawless. Save, of course, for a tiny scar on his right cheek that she would almost say was the pockmark remnant of acne if it weren't the only one of its kind on his face. Did aliens even get pimples?

As he worked and concentrated on the task before him, she noticed his antennae (antennae!) moving expressively. No matter how horribly he had treated her, she was fascinated by him simply by virtue of his alienness. With his demeanor softened this way, it was almost impossible to believe he had electrocuted her to her knees and threatened her life repeatedly. He looked almost gentle. She reproachfully reminded herself that it would be dangerous to mistake him for anything but deadly.

She would _not_ let herself forget that he had, in fact, done horrible things to her and would likely dismember her if it would please him. She saw vast intelligence behind those large red eyes of his and she knew he was probably capable of things she couldn't even dream of. He had communicated as much to her in a single glance.

Still, as he sat there quietly working on his... machine, was it? Some kind of device? As he sat there working on it, looking quite different from the vicious creature he had been not even an hour ago, she began to allow herself the real hope that she might make it out of this in one piece. Or at least still sentient.

If he could _appear_ gentle, there might be some modicum of humanity lurking in there. Appeal to that side of him and maybe she would be okay. Maybe he would let her live even though she knew of his existence when he was so obviously desperate to conceal himself.

Make him see her as an individual and maybe she could get out of this.

She cleared her throat a little and looked at him. He was obviously aware of her because he flicked his eyes briefly in her direction, but he continued working. She just stared at him, not quite sure what she should say.

"What?" he snapped impatiently. "What do you _want_? I'm working."

She was quiet for a moment and then asked, "Do you have a name?"

He paused again, just briefly. His face contorted into a small grimace and then he kept working. _"Silence_. I don't have time for this nonsense."

She was quiet, shifting her gaze toward the ice in her glass that was now almost completely melted. She continued to hold it for no other reason than nerves, needing something to do with her hands or she would start fidgeting or biting her nails.

After maybe a minute or two, she said, "Mine is Jex." Her voice was calm and even.

Zim said nothing. He just sat there, working on enhancing his communication device, apparently ignoring her completely. They sat in silence.

Ten minutes later, he placed his instrument on the table next to the device and sat back, hands on his knees. "I must admit," he said with what she was tempted to believe was a sincere tone, "your conversational attitude confuses me... _human_. Why do you think I would be interested in such a triviality as your name? Do you not remember the torture I'm willing to inflict upon you? I thought I made it very clear. You are a pawn, a thing to be used as a means to an end and nothing more. Irritate me further and you will _not_ live long." He seemed to be finished speaking, but then after a moment he added, "Why would I be interested in your name?"

Jex swallowed nervously and then looked at him. Her heart was pounding, knowing she was risking his irritation. Irritation can easily lead to frustration, which can quickly lead to anger. _Tread softly_, she reminded herself.

"Because," she began, pausing to select her words carefully. "...I'm going to help you."

In truth he was curious about her, about her name and many other things. Some of her behaviors had been entirely unanticipated and this intrigued him, even made him wonder if she might be truly valuable beyond his need for a place to hide. She claimed a willingness to help him and if he played his cards right, he might actually be able to capitalize on that willingness. If it was sincere.

The tension in the room was palpable as Jex sweated out Zim's silence and Zim pondered his options. He was, after all, getting nervous about GIR's continued silence even in the face of his enhanced communication device. Fortunately Jex had not called his bluff, but he had finished working on the enhancement about thirty minutes ago and had not successfully made contact with GIR. He did not want her to know that he was mentally flailing around in a near panic at the thought of his robotic servant and his headquarters both being infiltrated by the human vermin, so he had been feigning continued work on the device while he tried to decide on his next move.

Zim stood up and walked toward Jex. She looked up at him with a transparently hopeful expression on her face. He crossed his arms and looked down at her, his demeanor nothing short of pompous. "You will continue to serve me because you must, _not_ because you've chosen it," he asserted. "You have been stripped of the luxury of _choice_."

Jex's expression faltered. She knew he was right, but the confirmation of her fears was almost too much to bear. There was no ounce of compassion to be accessed in the creature, the _alien_, standing over her. It would be a mistake to believe she would escape this situation alive. She continued to breathe because he found her useful, or believed she might be useful in the future. The most she could realistically hope for was a quick death once her purpose had been served. Or escape, if she dared risk it. The problem is, he now knew where she lived. There they were, after all, sitting in _her_ fucking living room.

With a flippant gesture of the hand, he sat back down in front of his device and continued to pretend to tinker with it. "Zim," he said.

She looked at him. "What?"

"I am IRKEN INVADER ZIM!" He proudly declared. A grin spread across his face. "I'm here to seize your planet, and yes, you're going to help me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Capax Infiniti**

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

"Dad, I'll be right back, I swear!" Jex shouted. "I just want to look at the lake again!"

She was ten years old and they were camping. They had done this every summer since she was about five years old, much to her mother's chagrin. She would have preferred her daughter laughing shrilly over boy bands and plastic toys, but if they were to go camping, the least they could do was visit an actual camp site. But no, her husband insisted on taking their little girl into the middle of the wilderness so that they could bond over "real camping", whatever that was.

Jex loved it. This was the highlight of her year and the reason she looked forward to summer break from school. Her favorite part? The lake. The way the light sparkled off its surface during sunrise, cooling off in its waters, spending long hours in a canoe with her father while he pointed out every species of bird and fish they encountered. Every morning she'd take off just before the sun peeked over the top of the trees so that she could watch the sun's magnificent ascent illuminate the lake.

She settled into her usual spot, sitting on a large rock outcropping overlooking the water. There was a scent that filled the air this morning, subtle at first and then it seemed to inundate her senses. It was a wonderful smell, earthy and sweet, and it was so comforting that it felt like it would wrap its arms around her and lull her back to sleep. What _was_ it? Not flowers, but gentle like that...

She heard a loud rumbling and the earth began to tremble.

"Jex," a voice echoed in her ears.

She looked around, confused as she grappled to steady herself, losing her footing in the tremor.

"Jex!" the voice repeated urgently.

"Who's there?!" She couldn't tell which way was which as the world seemed to tumble around her; she was confused and dizzy and--

"HUMAN, WAKE YOURSELF."

Jex opened her eyes slowly; her eyelids felt like they were weighted down by lead. When her vision focused, she was met with the sight of giant, smooth red eyes staring back at her. Starting violently and sitting up, she quickly scooted back on the couch until she nearly fell over the arm. Zim was standing over her, his antennae straight up and alert, hands on her shoulders. She had been awakened by the alien shaking her.

"You've been sleeping for _three hours_," he said reproachfully.

"CHRIST," she said, "you scared me to death!"

Zim blinked and stood up, releasing her shoulders. "Yes, well, next time you should wake up when I tell you to, then."

His voice slithered coolly in and out of her mind as she tried to pull herself into full consciousness, fighting the urge to slip back into sleep. Her exhaustion left her with far less tolerance than she had earlier in the morning.

"I wouldn't have been so exhausted if I hadn't been mugged in the middle of the night by an ALIEN, electrocuted, shouted at and threatened repeatedly with torture and DEATH!" Her blood was boiling at his audacity and his violent intrusion into her life. She'd been living a perfectly normal, happy, pleasant life, and although the idea that aliens do indeed exist would have normally thrilled her, THIS was not how she wanted to find out. And now this short green fucker was denying her sleep, for crying out loud. It was too much.

She stood up to face him, staring at his bewildered features. "You know what, you can KILL ME for all I care, I am not helping such a megalomaniacal, vainglorious asshole as you, alien or not!" She was losing control of herself, blinded by pure rage and the confusion of her dream blending into the waking _world and that smell she kept being inundated by what was it why was it so familiar and why did the alien choose her how was she going to escape what the fuck was going on and what happened to normalcy--_

Jex raised her fists and started wailing on Zim.

Or at least, she attempted to. She got in one good punch to his shoulder as he dodged her somewhat unexpected tantrum and he subsequently, calmly caught each wrist in his hands. He gripped her tightly, remaining perfectly placid and stern as he stared at her.

Her long brown hair was hanging down around her face in a mess as she hung her head, wrists bound tightly by Zim's hands. She was losing her mind; this was all far too much to process in the span of a mere few hours, and oh God, her traumatized body was so exhausted. The left side of her ribcage throbbed with each inhalation and each movement of her torso, her throat was bruised from Zim's grip and her entire body ached.

She lifted her head to meet Zim's eyes with hers. His harsh, apparently unemotional eyes. Her own face was streaked with tears, eyes bloodshot from lack of rest and emotional strain. _"Fuck you_," she spat, spittle flying. "You're a _coward_, hiding in my apartment and beating me like a plaything."

At this, Zim grabbed her throat again, one eye twitching in anger. She cried out in pain, and he simply pushed her backward. He did not topple her, though-- he simply pushed her back into the next room of the apartment. He tightened his grip and then shoved her inside.

"Pull yourself together, human _slave_, or you won't see another sunrise." He closed the door to her bedroom with a slam and commanded through the door, "Sleep off your foolishness."

She was stunned. She was certain that her outburst had been her last action in this life, that he would kill her for what he would see as insubordination. She had been desperate to spit in his face, to tell him to go to Hell, to scream and shout and protest her fate as he sent her to meet it. To go out kicking and screaming.

Yet here she was in her bedroom with the order to go back to sleep. Nothing seemed certain, neither life nor death.

* * *

Zim paced back and forth in the human's apartment, stir crazy and desperate. He was unsuccessful at reaching GIR, so his first instinct was to kill the female and go back to headquarters to investigate. Yet he couldn't risk being apprehended by the agents who could easily be in the vicinity searching for him. Here, at least for the time being, he was hidden. Safe. GIR would be fine, but the thought of the humans infiltrating his home base made him claw at the walls in desperation. If the mission was compromised he would never be able to return to Irk. He couldn't use his disguise; he mindlessly left it at headquarters in his rush to grab GIR.

And now he was not only trapped in a human dwelling but _with_ a human. He shuddered in revulsion while taking in the full scope of his surroundings. Why hadn't he killed her? Sliced her head from her shoulders when she dared raise her hand against the _great_ Invader Zim? He continued to pace. He was hoping to elicit her help in returning him to his house, but it was absurd that he would let such insubordination go unpunished. So absurd, in fact, that he was tempted to enter her bedroom and pin her to the bed while she slept, like a butterfly on display. Let her awaken to the horror of knowing she would bleed out while impaled by one of his supplemental metal appendages. Perverse pleasure spread across his face at the thought of inflicting death and pain upon the disgusting creature that dared question him, let alone raise her voice, her _hands_ to him.

In fact, yes. That's what he would do. He didn't need her help. Help from a _human_? Ugh! The very thought was revolting and Zim was appalled that he had entertained it.

He strode over to her bedroom door, opening it quietly. She was indeed asleep already, her body and mind utterly exhausted from that night's exertions. A wicked grin spread across his face as his PAK opened and four spindly metallic legs emerged and spread behind him. Two of these legs served to prop him up and raise him above the bed, while the other two loomed above the sleeping woman. He would take great pleasure in watching her insolent little face contort in misery while her body squirmed. How dare she spit in the face of ZIM?

He suppressed a triumphant laugh; he wanted to catch her by surprise with her gruesome fate rather than wake her prematurely. It would be exquisite to witness her horror when she cried out in pain and saw the sadistic malice in his face. To watch the realization dawn on her that she was pinned, impaled. The butterfly analogy was pure artistic genius; he would trap her, smearing her disobedience across her face in the form of her own blood, tearing her to pieces at his whim. Perhaps he would impale her arms first to prolong her misery, dissecting her from the bowls upward.

He stabbed the pillow next to her head with his left front robotic leg to stabilize himself as he lowered his body above hers. His face was once again mere inches from hers, his hands planted next to her head, his fourth spider leg primed and ready to pierce her right arm. On second thought, he wanted her to open her eyes and see him, to know that he, Zim, was the shape of her demise. Terrorizing a helpless creature was an art. Although he did suspect she was not exactly helpless, it was all the more reason to dispose of her before she could cause him any further irritation or trouble.

He prepared to wake her with the first thrust of the metallic leg, when she said something in her sleep. His curiosity got the better of him and he concentrated on listening, his invisible eyebrow raising in silent question. There was all the time in the world to torture and kill her, after all. Perhaps she would utter something useful.

Jex stirred slightly. "...ipsen."

Zim cocked his head in confusion. Ipsen? This was not a human word he was familiar with, and he was indeed familiar with most of the major Earth languages and dialects. Maybe it was a name. Either way, it didn't matter. More than curious he was bloodthirsty. It had been far too long since he had doled out ritual punishment and this was the perfect opportunity.

He leaned in closely again, his excitement rising at the thought of her fear and terror upon seeing his face. Once again he prepared to inflict the first stab of many upon her frail human form, when Jex moved. Still sleeping, she quietly rose her hands and placed them on the green skin of his face. He was so stunned he just stared at her. What in the Tallest's names was she doing?

Using her hands, she gently bowed his head to meet her own forehead and... she wept. Her tears were silent, but they streamed freely from the corners of her eyes. "I remember," she said. "Ipsen." She exhaled and her breathing shuddered with emotion.

Zim felt frozen in place. What was this human doing? This was absurd. He prepared to pull himself back so that he could complete his task, raising his metallic leg murderously, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Part of him, probably a greater part than he would care to admit, wanted to find out what was behind her peculiar actions. But there was no way he would admit that to himself, so he simply used his arachnid legs to hold himself up while he took his own hands from her pillow, placed them gently on her wrists so as not to wake her, and lowered her hands back down to her own body. She sniffled in her sleep and curled onto her side like a child in the middle of a fitful dream. The previously powerful, animalistic rage he had witnessed in her was gone and she was nothing short of pitiful. The strangest thing was that he did not feel disgust at this blatant display of weakness but was instead filled with unexpected concern.

Deeply disturbed by both her odd behavior and his reaction to it, Zim pulled himself back, retracted his metallic legs and left the bedroom, leaving the door open.

Jex continued to dream of a lake, a forest and a scent she could remember but not identify, filling her with wonder, fear and sadness.

* * *

The dim light of dusk filled Jex's bedroom and she stirred. Consciousness slowly returned to her and as she stretched beneath the sheets, opening her eyes, she was honestly relieved that she'd managed to sleep the entire day away. Her ribs still throbbed and her body still ached from the trauma of electrocution, but she felt refreshed.

It was then that the realization, the remembrance, of exactly what it was that had happened to her in the early hours of the morning. Nausea overtook her and she threw the covers from her body, running from the bedroom and into the bathroom. Lurching over the toilet, she retched and emptied the contents of her stomach into the bowl... nothing but watery acid.

She heard a faint click and a sizzle from behind her, and the most sickening kind of dread fell upon her. _Please, God, not again._ She wiped her mouth and put her hands in the air, palms open, still kneeling in front of the toilet.

"Get up," Zim ordered. "I don't know what you're doing but I want no sudden movements from you."

Jex slowly rose to her feet, put her hands behind her head, and turned ever so cautiously to face the alien in her bathroom doorway. Her body was trembling with revulsion at the thought of being electrocuted again and the pure physical strain of having just vomited on an empty stomach. "I was getting sick," she said evenly but with no trace of defiance in her voice.

Zim continued to point the alien taser at her, aiming for her chest. He stared at her for a full thirty seconds or so before lowering the weapon and leaving the bathroom doorway. Jex exhaled in relief and braced herself against the wood of the door frame. This was ridiculous. Why couldn't the one alien she encountered be less like the fuckers from Independence Day and more like E.T.?

Collecting herself, she decided to stand tall and figure a way out of this, or at least a path to survival. Fate would take her where it wanted and vomiting in her bathroom would only delay whatever inevitability lied ahead of her. She would do herself no good falling apart at the seams.

After brushing her teeth, Jex made her way back into the living room and found Zim standing at the window, one hand clasped around the other wrist behind his back, watching the sunset. She had a very clear view of the curious little oblong backpack he wore and wondered what he kept in there. His alien, uh, stuff... she guessed? She even dared wonder if she would be able to gain access to it later if necessary. She might meet her death with this absurdly little green man from outer space, but she would not go down without a fight.

"I want to wait for another few hours and then you're going to take me back to my house," Zim stated without turning around. "We will not be able to use your vehicle as the authorities who would apprehend me have certainly identified its make, model and color. I will need a disguise and you will provide me with it."

Jex took a moment to process what he was saying, and then she was flabbergasted at the suggestion that they would be able to sufficiently conceal his obviously alien features from the public. And how exactly was she supposed to take him to his house undetected without a car, disguise or no disguise?

"The only means of transportation I can think of would be the subway or the bus, and both are thronging with people," Jex explained. "I can't imagine how we could possibly disguise you well enough to transport you that way."

Zim's antennae twitched. Jex cleared her throat. "I mean, no offense..." she said with hesitation; the last thing she wanted was to anger him again. "You _are_ another species, though. It's not like we can just throw on a wig and some contact lenses."

At that, as the sun began to dip below the horizon, Zim turned around and looked at her, an odd little smile on his face. He actually chuckled and said, "Yes, that's true. Nevertheless, you seem to be a resourceful human and I know you will think of something. I don't trust you enough to let you roam the city in search of the elements of my disguise, so you will have to find them here. You will be successful if you want to prolong your life."

Searing hot anger rose in her chest and threatened to color her face. This was a ridiculous assertion and he knew it, but he was obviously enjoying toying with her. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes. What was he playing at?

Oh yes, Zim was enjoying this. He may not yet be able to watch her squirm under his implements of torture, but he could certainly make her feel uncomfortable in the meantime. Furthermore, he believed what he had said-- she would be able to concoct a suitable disguise if her behavior thus far was any indication of her resourcefulness. There must be innovation lurking beneath that feisty persona somewhere. He had her, so he would use her.

She lifted her chin slightly in prideful determination. "Fine then," she said. "I will." She left the room.

Zim returned to staring at the city outside, wondering when he might receive a status update from GIR, antennae prickling at every small sound in the apartment as he anticipated his fully enhanced (thanks to his mechanical genius) communication device springing to life with a transmission. Unfortunately, nothing came and Zim's own attempts at sending outgoing messages had gone unanswered.

After about ten minutes, Jex returned to the living room with her arms full of clothing and random objects. "Okay, _Zim_," she said, a snide tone daring to creep into her words. "This is the best I can do. If you don't like it, you can kill me or whatever. You're going to anyway."

Zim turned to face her and a look of puzzled amusement spread across his face. This attitude was certainly interesting. He could certainly punish her for her continued insolence, but he was far too curious to see what paltry little getup the human had come up with and he was entertained by her delusional surge of confidence . "Heh," he uttered, looking at the pile as she dropped it onto the table next to his communication device.

"Well, you might as well sit down," she said, sitting on the couch and gesturing to the spot next to her. "You'll probably need my help."

His antennae twitched and he gave her a suspicious look.

"Oh relax," she said, gaining her confidence back. She flipped open a rectangular case she had brought in with the clothes. "It's makeup. You can't go out there with green skin if you don't want to be 'apprehended'."

With a slightly defiant look at the notion of being commanded by this human female, he reluctantly set aside his pride and sat on the couch next to her. This was not at all a comfortable suggestion for him, letting this human apply makeup to his skin. He was accustomed to letting his computer apply the disguise in one fell swoop, and at the mere press of a button.

They turned to face each other, she hiding the small pleasure she was deriving from the role reversal of making him uncomfortable, he failing to stifle a cringe as she reached up to touch his face. "I'm not going to bite," she said with a sigh. "I want to see your skin in the light of the lamp so I can figure out what'll provide the best coverage."

He did not think she would bite and the suggestion was infuriating. An Irken Invader shying from the bite of a paltry human being, HAH! No, he was cringing because the thought of being touched again by this disgusting creature was nauseating.

_no no that's not it you find it curious and you don't want to admit it and you want to see--_

Zim's face contorted into a look of frustration while she dug through her makeup. No, he most certainly did not like this. The idea was laughable. _Hahahaha._ Yes. The idea made his skin crawl, in fact.

Jex set a small container on the table along with a couple of brushes, grabbed a hair tie from the box, and pulled her long hair back from her face into a ponytail. Her disheveled hair had been hiding her features, but now they were in full view. She was really quite beautiful, for a human anyway. There was a softness and a fierceness to her looks; she appeared far younger than he knew she was but there was also something defiant in her face. A desire to live, probably. Fighting against the fate he was going to dole out when her usefulness had expired.

"Okay," she said, picking up the bottle. She poured a small amount of liquid makeup on the back of her hand and exhaled slowly. She seemed to be steadying herself, centering herself. And why wouldn't she? Zim had threatened her life if this experiment was a failure.

She grabbed a brush, scooted closer to him and then lifted her gaze to meet his. Her right hand held the brush, dipping it into the liquid on her left hand before raising the bristles to his face. His gloved hand instinctively flew up and grabbed her wrist violently, sending a few small splatters of the liquid makeup across her couch. Jex was startled as he stared into her eyes menacingly. Zim did not like this; it made him supremely uncomfortable and he wasn't sure it was worth it to let this human mess with _his_ face. On the other hand, this was probably his only chance at getting back to headquarters without GIR's help.

After Zim's face folded into a series of contortions that Jex could only assume were a reflection of some internal conflict, he relented and let her wrist go.

Hesitating briefly, Jex rose the brush to his face and painted the first stroke. She moved the brush in circular motions against his green skin, doing her best to blend the color into his cheek well enough to cover the green tint. Unfortunately, the bristles were leaving streaks of makeup akin to paintbrush strokes.

Feeling panic creep into her chest, Jex stopped.

"What?" Zim said impatiently. "Have on with it, _get it over with_."

Jex fidgeted with the brush for a second and looked at the streaked makeup on his face, doing her best to remain calm. She could try using her fingers, but she was afraid. If that didn't work, she would surely be killed or at least electrocuted for her incompetence. Or something else, some other form of torture he had yet to spring on her, no doubt.

Taking a deep breath and trying to ignore his looks of uncertainty and impatience, she lifted her hand and touched his face. Zim cringed under her touch but did not stop her. Spreading the makeup with her fingers was much more effective than using the brush, and she felt herself exhale with utter relief. This may actually work. The coverage wasn't perfect, but in the cover of night and the poor lighting of public transportation, hopefully no one would notice.

She dipped two of her fingers in the makeup on her left hand again and touched the other side of his face. Her movements were soft and gentle, as was necessary for cosmetic application. She didn't wear heavy layers of makeup like many women her age, but she did know how to use it. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Zim's antennae lowering to what she might assume to be a relaxed position, down behind his head.

Actually, that wasn't far from accurate. Zim had succumbed to the fact that allowing Jex to touch his face would be necessary to successfully disguise himself from human eyes, and at first her touch filled him with alarm. He was unaccustomed to being this close to a human, these loathsome creatures he regarded as no more than vermin to be exploited and exterminated when his plan came to fruition. Yet here he was, under the care of this strange female, being treated with what felt like tenderness. He _knew_ she was only following his orders and that her touch was in accordance with whatever technique she needed to employ for the application of his disguise. Still, the effect of this unfamiliar experience was utterly intoxicating and not at all nauseating as he would have anticipated.

After a few minutes of this, he saw Jex draw back from him with an expression nothing short of alarmed.

"Um... Zim? Your um... your..." she gestured at his head.

Zim jolted himself out of his reverie and immediately felt rage beginning to build. What was she going on about?! With as much intimidation as he could muster he demanded, "WHAT DID YOU DO, HUMAN?"

Doing her best to remain seated instead of backing away from the angry extraterrestrial in her face, she nervously fumbled for the hand mirror in her makeup case and thrust it at Zim in a panic. "I don't know! Here, look!"

He took the mirror and looked into it, immediately furious at what he saw. Part of his face was thoroughly covered with the makeup she had been applying, but that was not what she had been pointing at. His antennae were vibrating, generating a quiet hum which was slowing down now that he had been stirred into anger. No, not anger. He was _enraged_ by the implication. It was preposterous.

Shoving the mirror at Jex, he bit his tongue and commanded her to continue. "Finish your assignment, human," he spat with disgust.

The manner in which his antennae had been humming was the Irken equivalent of blushing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Capax Infiniti**

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 3**

"If I'm going to help you get back to your house, you can't spend the entire journey poking me with that space taser or whatever the hell it is."

Jex stood before Zim, examining his now artificially humanesque skin for any patches of green that might be showing through. Her work was actually pretty good, if she did say so herself, and when you paired that with a hoodie sweatshirt to cover his head, track pants, sneakers, leather gloves and aviator sunglasses... well, sure, he looked like the Unabomber but he would pass for human. Fortunately for them both, he was small enough that he actually fit her clothing.

Zim scrunched his face up in irritation. "Female, I don't think you're in any position to demand anything."

Sighing, Jex insisted, "Perhaps not, but where we're going there will be a _lot_ of people and chances are they're going to notice if you keep poking me with that thing."

Zim considered this and, realizing she was probably right, dropped the subject entirely rather than concede to her point. "You will focus on navigating us toward my headquarters and _I_ will worry about everything else."

Jex fought the urge to roll her eyes. His pride was unbelievable. "Well, your disguise is finished anyway. Take a look." She pointed toward the mirror hanging on the wall near the kitchen.

While he checked himself out, she tried to figure out how she was going to lose him while they were in the city. She was running a huge risk by trying to escape, but there was no reason to believe he wouldn't kill her the minute they arrived at their destination anyway. If she was going to die, she wasn't going to let her last act in this life be to ride the subway with a misanthropic alien.

* * *

Zim looked around in confusion at the turnstile gates leading into the closest platform of the subway. The truth was, he knew that the subway was an underground mode of transportation but he hadn't been bothered to investigate it further. "These look more like weapons than transportation units, human," he sneered suspiciously. "I am no _fool_."

Grabbing Zim's hand, Jex slapped a subway token into his gloved palm. "They're not weapons. Just do what I do."

She inserted a token into the slot and began to walk through the turnstile. Zim tried to walk through close behind her, impatient to get back to his lair, but ended up stuck behind the bar in the process. "WHAT IS THIS?! You dare thwart ME?" He erupted in a fit of violence, shaking the bar relentlessly.

Other city travelers stopped to stare in amazement at the crazy man wearing sunglasses in the subway, apparently trying to destroy one of the turnstiles, while Jex glanced around nervously at them. "Ahahaha, you're so silly! Always PLAYING PRACTICAL JOKES!" she shouted loudly, grinning at the confused bystanders. She grabbed his arm so that she could take the token from him and do it herself.

Zim stared at her in frustration, speaking through clenched teeth. "The _bar_ has denied my passage."

Wrenching the token out of Zim's hand, Jex reached across him and inserted it into the slot. The turnstile clicked loudly and Zim, having been applying large amounts of pressure on the bar, immediately fell through and stumbled.

"Inferior human technology," he spat. "Irkens would never rely on such an inconvenient contraption. It's pointless!"

"Well, that's lovely for you," Jex sighed impatiently. Although Zim's disguise was passable, if she looked at him for more than just a glance she could certainly tell that there was something not quite right about him. She didn't want him attracting this kind of attention and implicating her in his activities. "This is making me nervous, let's just go."

* * *

"Thirty seconds to next Northbound train," the programmed subway announcement declared overhead. "Please stand back."

As Unabomber Zim and Jex stood waiting for the train to arrive, they were entirely unaware that they were being watched.

"Twenty seconds to next Northbound train," the announcement's smooth voice reminded them.

Jex tossed a sideways glance at Zim and noticed his antennae moving around underneath his hoodie. It almost looked like he was hiding a small animal under there.

"Zim," she hissed. "You need to try to keep those antennae under control, it looks weird!"

He stiffened in embarrassment, pressing his antennae flat against his head. "And _you_ need to keep your mouth under control if you want to live," he snapped.

A small crowd of waiting passengers had formed in the area and Jex found herself bouncing a little on her legs out of pure anxiety. The train pulled up in front of them, sending a gust of air whipping through the crowd. Zim held his hoodie against his head. It was then that she realized that there were a couple of rude people behind her invading their personal space. Creepy assholes.

"Look buddy," she said as she turned around. "Back off--"

She cut herself off as she realized they were gathering around Zim in a way that was a little bit too deliberate to be coincidental. She saw him shift uncomfortably.

Zim was aware of the people around him but he mistook their closeness for the disgusting pack behavior of human crowds. _I can't get away from their smell_, he thought to himself, shifting uncomfortably yet again. _It's repugnant_.

As people got off of the train on the opposite side of the platform and they waited for the doors to open, Jex inched closer to Zim and took his arm, linking it in hers. As Zim was about to demand to know what she was doing, quite loudly in fact, she looked at him and quickly shook her head. Giving him a very meaningful, intent look, she quickly flicked her eyes to her left, indicating that he should look over his shoulder.

Looking puzzled, Zim slowly turned his head just enough so that he could see the three men surrounding them from behind. Blood rushed to his head as he realized that Jex had noticed what he had failed to register while he was preoccupied with the smell of the humans. _But how had they found him so easily?_

Jex leaned in as though she were going to share a secret with him, as though they were nothing more than two people flirting with each other as they were boarding the subway. "When the door of the train opens," she whispered, "get in. I'll distract them. She added a little smile at the end so that anyone watching would assume she was expressing nothing more than a flirtatious triviality.

In fact, this was the perfect opportunity to get rid of Zim.

The door opened.

Jex unlinked her arm from Zim's and the alien moved forward to enter the train.

She turned to the men behind them, the military agents disguised as passengers.

Taking a deep breath, she spun back around, ripped the hood from Zim's head and shouted at the agents, "He's THERE!!"

The moment the hood was removed from his head, Zim knew what had happened and he filled with rage. "How DARE YOU?!" He flipped the hood back onto his head but it was too late; he had been spotted not only by a handful of passengers but also by the agents he was trying to evade. A panicked look flashed across his face in the midst of his anger. "They'll DISSECT ME!!"

"Shit," one of the agents muttered. "CLEAR THE AREA!" he shouted, pulling out his pistol and a piece of identification that Jex strained to see in the cacophony but couldn't.

Screaming and shouting filled the air at the sight of the gun and people pushed into each other, hysterically trying to escape the chaos and potential danger. Zim was trying to use this to his advantage; maybe he could lose them. _That stinking pile of human filth betrayed me_, he thought. _I'll kill her_.

Jex heard Zim shouting something about being dissected as she was running away from the train. She stopped and looked back, seeing Zim inside the car with the agents bearing down on him. He was frantically looking for an escape route.

A quick image flashed in her mind: Zim strapped to an examination table in some dilapidated old building out in the desert, shadowy figures wielding sharp instruments hovering over him. Visions of conscious surgeries and organ removal flashed across her eyes and she shuddered. Surely her imagination was running away with her, accessing memories of Hollywood dramatizations and nothing more.

Besides, he would deserve whatever he got, right?

Zim was shouting at the agents who were aiming their guns at him. The train still stood on the platform, but it ran on a schedule and would leave shortly. The doors were still open but the agents were blocking Zim's escape route. She could see that if he tried to dart past them, they would grab him with ease.

"...damn it," she sighed. Her better nature couldn't bear to let someone be taken in and gruesomely dissected like a lab rat, alien or not.

"Stand clear, doors are closing," the silky overhead voice warned them.

Just as the doors were about to close, Jex ran toward the train and made it into the passenger car next to the car where Zim and the agents were. There were still people in here, a couple of them crouched down on the floor in a panic, too frozen with confusion and fear to move.

"Is it terrorists?" one woman asked Jex from her position hiding behind a couple of the seats.

"More or less," Jex answered without much thought, inching her way toward the door between the two cars.

"Oh God!!" the woman screamed, putting her hands over her ears and shutting her eyes. Jex briefly wondered what she would do if she knew it was an alien terrorist.

* * *

The subway started to lurch forward and Zim struggled to maintain his footing.

"Stand BACK, filthy human vermin!" Zim commanded, pointing a hand at them. "You know not what you mess with!!"

"Come with us and we won't harm you," one of the agents said while making coaxing gestures with his free hand and pointing his gun at Zim with the other.

Zim started laughing loudly. "HAHAHAHA. Stupid human! You take me for a fool!" Dropping his voice to a menacing growl and narrowing his eyes, he added "...that's unwise." He threw back the hood of the sweatshirt, sunglasses falling to the floor. A grinning snarl spread across his face as four metallic spider legs ripped holes into the back of his shirt and planted themselves on the floor of the train car, lifting him up toward the ceiling.

The agents looked alarmed but held their ground. "STAND DOWN," the second one ordered.

Maniacal laughter echoed through the train car as Zim moved closer to the agents. "Pitiful human," he sneered. "Is this ALL you bring to thwart Zim?! Your pistols?!" He was thrilled at the realization that these humans weren't as much of a threat as he had thought. "PATHETIC!" Laughing again, he raised one of his legs as he prepared to stab one of the agents.

"ZIM!"

Confused, Zim turned around to see a blur that vaguely resembled Jex slamming into an agent behind Zim that had been pointing a gun up toward the alien's head. He had been so wrapped up in his eagerness to lacerate one agent's face that the third agent maneuvering his way behind him had gone unnoticed. Now, the agent was sprawled against a row of chairs and the floor, a tangle of his own limbs mingled with Jex's.

She struggled to untangle herself from the man and shouted, "The door!" as the agent she had knocked over grabbed at her.

Zim saw in a flash that the doors between two cars had been opened and he had a clear path to escape, at least toward the other end of the train until it came to a stop. He turned and unceremoniously stabbed the first agent in the neck with one of his legs to prevent him from following. The agent shouted, but all that came out was a grotesque gurgle as his throat filled with blood, Zim ripping his throat wide open as he pulled his leg out of the man, sending gore spraying across the train car.

Turning to the second agent, Zim saw that the man had been speaking into a small communication piece attached to his ear. Approaching the man with a few small steps of his metallic appendages, Zim bent down over him menacingly. "You wish to call more of your colleagues to be slaughtered, then?" He tilted his head and grinned at the horrified agent. A metallic leg shot up through the man's torso and exploded out of his mouth, ripping him to shreds.

"AAAHAHAHA!!" Zim exploded in triumphant laughter, blood splattered across his clothing and face. "PATHETIC! Your weak bodies are so easily destroyed!"

The train sped forward and he turned to face Jex and the third agent. Immediately he stabbed the agent in the shoulder, pinning him to the wall of the train. Zim turned to look at Jex with an evil glint in his eye, when a loud beep issued from his PAK.

Zim shouted, "GIR!"

A video device emerged from the PAK and displayed a holographic image of a small waving robot with large blue eyes. "Hiiiiiiiii!"

"Where have you been, GIR?! Send the Voot Cruiser immediately!"

"You been paintin'!" GIR exclaimed and started clapping enthusiastically. "Weehoooo! I wanna see the pretties!"

Zims eye twitched impatiently. "SEND THE VOOT CRUISER, GIR!"

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmokay!" GIR saluted moronically and signed off.

He would have time to assess any damage to headquarters once he actually got there. For now, he reveled in the knowledge that he would escape this ridiculous scenario very soon. A low laugh started to build in Zim's throat and erupted into a full blown theatrical display. "HAHAHAHA!! HUMAN! Do you SEE? You lose in the face of ZIM! Your reinforcements will be destroyed!"

The agent moaned in pain and panted heavily, his shoulder bleeding profusely where the metallic leg still pierced it. "You're a..." the agent winced and struggled, panting again. "...you're a monster."

Zim moved closer to the agent and Jex, who was still crouched very close to the man. He ignored the struggling human attached to the end of his spider leg, keeping his shoulder impaled against the wall, and looked Jex in the eye. She trembled violently, terrified that she would meet the same gruesome end as the men whose bodies now painted a macabre scene behind Zim. He continued to stare at her with a twisted, psychotically angry look on his face. One of his other metallic legs raised in the air and brilliantly reflected the piss poor lighting of the subway car.

Jex closed her eyes tightly and waited for the inevitable.

A rush of wind passed her face and she heard the sickening sound of a crunch and what was most certainly the leg thrusting into human flesh. Opening her eyes, she saw Zim removing the two legs that had impaled the agent, one in the shoulder and the other in the middle of his skull. Eyes rolling back into his head, blood and brain matter leaking out of his skull, the agent slumped over onto the floor.

The arachnid legs retracted into Zim's PAK as he lowered himself to the floor, but he wasted no time in grabbing Jex by the throat, lifting her to her feet and slamming her against the closed door of the train. "I should throw you onto the tracks for betraying me."

Her hands on the alien fingers clutching her throat, she tried to pry him off of her, struggling and panicking but unable to take her eyes from his.

The truth was, he didn't want to kill her. She had helped him and he thought that her obviously keen human intuition would be a useful commodity. "Their deaths were quick," Zim said. "Cross me again and yours will not be so... expedient." He let go of her and she slumped over, gasping for air.


	4. Chapter 4

**Capax Infiniti**

A/N: This chapter and the last both seem a bit short, but it felt intuitive to divide the story where I have. Chapter 5 will be along quite soon.

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

Zim was leading the way, striding quickly through the subway without a second thought about the carnage left in his wake. Once again he wore his hoodie and sunglasses, although the makeup covering his skin wasn't as flawless as before. There was a large green patch of exposed skin on his left cheek.

Holding Jex by the wrist, he dragged her along with him as he made his way to the surface street. The Voot Cruiser would meet him soon and he wanted to be there the moment it arrived. He was tired of wasting time running around the city and wanted to get back to his lair and move it to a secure location.

Just as they approached a stairwell leading to the street level, Zim yanked Jex with him behind a nearby pillar and activated his communication device. "GIR!"

The video display appeared in front of him and the little robot appeared again. "Yes, my lord!" Jex ogled the technology and found it curious that Zim would be working with a robot that was so oddly... cute.

"Status update on the Voot!" Zim demanded.

"We had to stop for taquitos!" GIR giggled. "Mmmm!"

"GIR! You left the house unmanned at a time like this?!"

GIR shook his head happily, a small pink tongue sticking out of his metallic mouth. "Minimoose is watchin' TV! I like him."

Zim clenched his teeth in frustration. "Just _get here_, GIR."

GIR grabbed his feet and rocked back in the chair of the Voot. "Okay!"

Just as the video display disappeared, there was a loud boom and the ground shook around them. Zim pulled Jex along as he urgently ran up the stairs, absolutely certain that GIR had wreaked havoc on the street above.

"You can let go of me now!" Jex shouted over the noise.

Zim ignored her, continuing to pull her along. As they ascended the last few stairs, Zim was assaulted with the sight of the Voot Cruiser. It had violently crash landed into the side of the subway building, causing several cars to pile up in an accident at the nearby intersection. People were crowding around the ship while GIR sat on the front of it, shield lowered, munching on a couple of taquitos. People were pointing, staring, murmuring, shocked and bewildered. Most of them were using their cell phones to take pictures.

"Hi, Zim!" he waved cheerfully, mouth full of food.

"Damn it, GIR!" Zim was now running full speed to the Voot, pushing confused people out of the way. With no warning, he shoved both Jex and GIR over the edge and into the cockpit, jumping in after them and hitting several controls. Immediately the canopy shield closed over the cockpit and the cruiser powered to life.

The astonished crowd started drawing in on them now that they were preparing to leave. Just as one of the more fearless bystanders tried to climb on top of the front of the Voot, Zim shot the ship up into the air, knocking the man back a good fifty feet. Zim laughed again. "Stupid humans!"

Jex crouched next to Zim's chair and steadied herself. It was an extremely tight squeeze in this little spaceship that clearly wasn't meant to house two adult sized humanoids, even if they were both rathershort.

Spaceship. She was in a spaceship. With an alien. A green alien who had just murdered several people in cold blood... or was it self-defense? Either way, even she survived this adventure no one would ever believe her.

Out of nowhere, GIR plopped himself on her lap and kicked his legs. "HI!! Whatchoo doin'?" he smiled broadly.

_Admittedly, the little guy really _is_ cute_, Jex thought. What an odd pair he and Zim made. "You're GIR?" she asked.

GIR waved his arms and shouted, "Heyyy. That's ME!! Eeeeheeheehee!!" He continued his hyper laugh as he bounced off of her toward Zim, latching onto his head comfortably. "I missed you, master. Where you _been?_"

"Once again, get off of my head, GIR," Zim ordered. He didn't bother enforcing the order when GIR decided he was content to stay where he was.

To Jex it felt as though they had been in flight for no more than a couple of minutes, but they were soon at their destination: Zim's house. She marveled that the oddity that was his house was... painfully conspicuous. Then again, most people she knew lumbered through life without much awareness of what was going on around them, so the success of Zim's masquerade even while living in this eyesore of a house wasnt entirely surprising.

As for Zim, he was glad to see that there were no humans milling around his lair, although he couldn't be certain they weren't staking him out nearby. He would have to be quick.

Zim punched a couple of buttons on the Voot's communication console. "Computer!"

"Yes, Zim."

"Collapse headquarters immediately!" Zim ordered.

Jex gawked at the rapid transformation that took place before her eyes. The roof of Zim's house opened to reveal an empty platform. The walls receded and unveiled a support structure of cables and an interior filled with human furniture among various odds and ends. As the cables retracted, the ground shook and vast amounts of underground equipment, cables and unidentifiable materials retracted and collapsed along with the furniture. More cables withdrew from the two neighboring houses.

_How did he get away with that?_ Jex marveled.

Within a span of no more than sixty seconds or so, the entire house had collapsed into what looked like a miniature drill or screw, which now sat innocently on the ground next to the massive hole left by Zim's underground headquarters.

"Stay here," Zim commanded as he opened the shield. He hopped out, grabbed the little thing that was once his house and was quickly on his way back to the Voot Cruiser when he heard a distant _pop_ followed by a faint whizzing sound.

"Fuck!" Jex shouted, grabbing her arm. There was a needle sticking out of her bicep. "What the hell is this?!"

They looked around and saw a man, an agent no doubt, hurrying across the street toward them. It was obvious that he had been firing at Zim, but his shot wasn't clear and he hit Jex instead.

A floating round-shaped purple moose that came out of nowhere followed Zim as he jumped in and closed the shield, powering up the ship and taking off. Everything was changing so quickly and Jex found herself struggling to stay abreast of what was happening. Several bullets ricocheted off of the ship as the agent fired in frustration, shouting something unintelligable all the while.

Jex seized the needle and pulled it out of her arm with a wince, clutching at the spot where she had been hit. She felt nauseous and lightheaded and assumed it was some kind of tranquilizer or other sedative. Someone obviously wanted to take Zim alive if they were using this, even in the wake of his murderous subway rampage.

As the Voot careened in the air, GIR jumped onto Jex's lap and shoved a stuffed animal pig in her face, shouting something, and that was the last thing she saw before she blacked out.

* * *

Jex awoke with a heavy head. She felt like her consciousness was struggling to swim to the top of a thick peat bog and her slow movements were uncoordinated, laborious. Her whole body felt like it was filled with lead. It took her a few moments to realize that her head was resting on a pillow and she was covered by a blanket. Had the whole thing been a fitful dream? Did she have too much to drink at a friend's house? Why was she on her couch instead of in bed? What the hell happened? She didn't feel like she had been dreaming last night, but this was definitely the worst hangover she had ever experienced.Coffee or tea was definitely in order. And water; she was dehydrated.

She slowly shifted her weight and sat up, holding her head with one hand while her temples throbbed. "Jesus," she muttered, rubbing her face. "Was there a roofie in my drink or what?" Steadying herself, she stood up and began a zombie march toward the kitchen.

_Wait-- the kitchen. It's the other way,_ she thought. _Isn't it?_

Trying to pull herself out of the mental haze, she forced herself to focus her eyes instead of operating on auto pilot. She was obviously in a bad way if she couldn't figure out how to get to her own damn kitchen.

As Jex looked around, she realized this wasn't her apartment. It was someone's house, maybe, but not her apartment. There was something different about it. Something not quite right, actually. _The lighting is weird..._

Looking up, Jex was shocked into further confusion. At first she wasn't quite sure of what she was looking at, in that same way that an object on the side of the road, whether a shoe or a dead animal, looks like an unintelligible blob until you're close enough to put what you're seeing into context. What she saw was so out of the ordinary that it took her a moment to process it. In lieu of a ceiling or walls, this place was surrounded by a glass enclosure. This alone was enough to shake the rest of her grogginess away, but there was more. Not only did she appear to be inside a glass dome, but the whole place was completely surrounded by _steam_. Great billowing clouds of steam.

Zim. Where had he taken her?

"Ah, you're awake."

Jex was startled out of her reverie and turned around to see Zim rising up out of a chute in the floor of the rather sparse living room. He had dropped the disguise and was wearing the same maroon colored clothes, black boots and gloves she recalled from when he first assaulted her.

"Where the hell are we?!" Jex demanded in a slight panic, gesturing toward the scene outside. "Just how far from home did you take me?"

"Oh, it's brilliant," Zim claimed as he walked from the transport to the wall of the dome, surveying their surroundings. He was clearly convinced of his own genius. "I thought about hiding this place underwater, you know, since there's _so much of it_ on your planet," he shuddered in revulsion. "...but I'm not really inclined to subject myself to that kind of anxiety."

Jex just stared at him in disbelief.

"Anyway, I wanted to find a secure location that wasn't too far from the mainland of your country," he continued. "This was my favorite option. The poetic genius of hiding in a volcano, one of your planet's most powerful natural features--"

"WHAT?!" Jex stepped toward Zim and fiercely grabbed his shirt in a bold display of anger, pulling him close to her face. She shook him as hard as she could. "I'm in a fucking VOLCANO?"

Zim grabbed her wrist and forcefully removed her hand from his shirt, shoving her back out of his face. She certainly was feisty. Dusting himself off casually he said, "Yes. We are. It's perfectly safe. Irken technology--"

"I don't give a damn about Irken technology," she interrupted her voice becoming increasingly panicked as she spoke. "What I want is to be at home, in my tiny little apartment, worrying about whether or not I'm going to be able to afford rent next month instead of worrying about oh, I dont know... ALIENS and being shot at and seeing people ripped apart at the seams and being cooked to death in the belly of a volcano!!"

...Was that really true? Would she honestly rather worry herself with the mundane aspects of her life? Part of her believed she was actually kind of enjoying the excitement, but she wasn't ready to admit that to herself.

"Computer," Zim said.

"Yes, Zim."

"Show our captive where we are."

A small video screen dropped down from a hole in the ceiling and hung in front of them. The computer's voice narrated while the display showed an aerial satellite video feed of the volcano along with a small map in the corner of the screen, pinpointing their location. "Augustine Volcano is located on Augustine Island, roughly one-hundred and eighty miles southwest of the nearest human city, known as Anchorage, Alaska. Status: active."

Jex gawked at the image on the screen, the computer's words repeating in her mind. Alaska. Volcano. Active. She looked up at the ceiling of the glass dome enclosure, taking in the view of those constant clouds of billowing steam. Little black spots danced around the corners of her vision, threatening to sink her back into unconsciousness.

Zim's voice was filled with pride as he said. "That is all, computer."

The video display folded and retracted back into the ceiling.

"It was time for me to move my mission out of the reconnaissance phase anyway," Zim grinned, pacing around the room and gesturing in excitement as he spoke. "This was just the push I needed. I've already begun drawing up plans for invasion. Once I'm finished I will call upon the Irken Armada to seize this planet and we will eradicate the entire biosphere, paving the way for imperial expansion. You should be honored that your filthy planet is going to be wiped clean for the purposes of the great Irken Empire."

"Why the hell am _I_ here? If you're 'done with reconnaissance', why do you need _my_ help?" Jex demanded, her voice shaking with a combination of anger and fear.

For a moment, Zim looked a little flustered. "I need help from no human!" he bellowed. "You're... collateral damage. Or collateral... captive. Something. Whatever." He waved his hand flippantly. "And anyway, your knowledge of human culture may still prove itself useful. This far removed from human society, I won't have as many opportunities to gather intelligence from your species should I find a need to do so. My computer can only help me so much in that regard."

From within the walls the computer coughed and muttered, "Thanks."

"And what am I supposed to do? Just sit around here and wait? Hope I might not die in the meantime?" Jex demanded. "Hope I get out of this alive until your armada comes to destroy my home?"

"Not my problem," he shrugged and started to walk back toward the transport tube. "I was generous enough to provide you with food and a source of water in the kitchen and in the bathrooms when I drew up the plans for this unit," he said. "GIR can show you around if you run into him."

With that, Zim disappeared into the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Capax Infiniti**

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

The glass of the dome occasionally steamed up as Jex stood close to it, watching the breath of the volcano dance around what was to be her home for the time being. She had managed to drink some water, take a shower and eat a couple of potato chips. GIR had helped her locate the chips (after a mind-numbingly difficult conversation), but she found she couldn't really stomach food right now. Her mind was full.

Would she be forgiven these trespasses, be forgiven for having helped inch her own people closer to their destruction? For helping this murderous creature for some reason she wasn't ready to understand? Why had she done it? Pity? Curiosity? A sudden thirst for the unknown? She couldn't decide which motivation would be the worst. A feeling of despair began to wash over her again and she fought back tears. This was too much. Too much to bear, too much to believe.

Jex remained there for awhile, enjoying the golden hue of the late afternoon that slipped through the steam clouds. An occasional ray of sunlight touched her face and calmed her, reminding her of the beauty her planet still had to offer. Grief prematurely gripped her as she imagined an apocalyptic cataclysm erasing everything she knew and loved.

After awhile, she heard Zim's transport rise through the chute in the floor. Jex kept her eyes on the view outside, not ready to look at the alien again. Every time she saw him she was slapped in the face with the cold truth that not only was the reality she thought she knew no longer familiar, but that she was party to the eventual destruction of her own kind. Even worse was that looking at him also excited her, because there he was, a frighteningly intelligent creature from another planet, and he was completely real. Extraterrestrials were real. Had she ever experienced anything more extraordinary? And it wasn't exactly disappointing that she wasn't at work right now. But she didn't _want_ to feel excited about having met him. How could she let herself feel excited in light of his genocidal promises?

"Well," Zim said as he approached the glass. He turned so that his back was leaning against the dome wall and he crossed his arms, looking relaxed. "You do have to admit that it's a magnificent sight, isn't it?"

She refused to look at him, but she did continue to admire the steam beyond the window. In the fleeting moments she could manage to get past the reason that she was here and the fact that she was probably in mortal danger while sitting on top of this geological behemoth, she _was_ able to see the beauty of the place. "I've certainly never seen anything like it up close," she admitted.

"Apparently there's a place kind of like it on Irk, but I've never been there," Zim mused.

This startled her. He hadn't said much about his home planet beyond praising the superiority of his species. Keeping her gaze focused on the hypnotic clouds of steam, Jex took this as an opportunity to find out more about him and asked, "What's it like? Irk, I mean."

Zim turned his head to look at her. "Powerful."

_Of course._ "Yes, you've hinted at that," she said sardonically.

"There is no better word to describe it. Although to be honest, most of what I know about Irk was gathered through the birth download and my experience in the Irken military," he shared. "I haven't explored much of the surface beyond military training facilities."

"Birth download?"

"A few minutes after we're released from our incubation pods, children are plugged into a database that downloads the whole of Irken knowledge into their brains," he explained factually, distantly. "It's efficient."

No matter the terror he had rained down upon her life, Jex couldn't help but feel sorry for him when she heard this. What a cold, detached way to enter the world.

"Do you have parents, then?" she asked.

Zim's antennae twitched. "Getting a little personal, human? Why do you _care_?"

Stiffening, Jex shrugged. "It's human nature to be curious about other people." She finally allowed herself to look at him; he was still leaning against the wall of the dome and had been watching her as they talked. "On Earth, a lot of who we are is shaped by our parents, so I just wondered--"

"I was under the impression that most human parents probably couldn't care less about the outcome of their children beyond some selfish purpose," he retorted. "I fail to see how this is superior to an Irken childhood. We cultivate our young into the perfect citizens, tacticians and warriors."

Jex didn't know what to say. She couldn't argue with his logic, but it seemed like such a ruthless existence. She swallowed. "I'm sorry if I've offended you."

Zim stared at her curiously. He hesitated and then said, "It's fine. I can't expect you not to have questions." As he spoke, he absent mindedly tugged on the fingers of his gloves, removing them from his hands. "You humans are ignorant about the space beyond your own atmosphere. Even your own solar system is more of a mystery to you than you realize. I don't know how you haven't destroyed yourselves by now."

As he spoke of human failings, Jex couldn't help staring at Zim's now bare hands. She hadn't seen them before, after all. "Um... right," she said, distracted by the novelty of seeing his fingers for the first time. "Well, there are some popular conspiracy theories about how much our government agencies might know but aren't sharing with the general population. I guess now that I've met you I don't think they're quite so paranoid."

Her transparent gawking was not lost on Zim and he stared right back at her, face unreadable, holding his gloves. "I'm familiar with these conspiracy theories," Zim said, thinking of Dib. He scratched the side of his face. The makeup he wore earlier had just enough moisture in it to irritate his skin and it was torturously itchy. "Most of them are nothing more than fanciful nonsense and wishful thinking, but every once in awhile someone gets it right. And by the way, did you think I had something other than hands hiding inside my gloves?" He opened and closed one of his palms a couple of times to poke fun at her, amused.

Her face flushed with embarrassment and shame for staring at him so unabashedly (although why she should feel shameful after what he'd done to her, she had no idea), but her pride wouldn't let her turn away. She met his gaze with feigned stubbornness. "Okay, I was staring," she admitted, hardening her expression. "What can you expect?"

Zim grinned at her in spite of himself. He hadn't gotten to know many humans during his time on Earth. Mostly he found them smelly and irritating, and the few he had come into prolonged contact with were constant thorns in his side. He had come to develop some modicum of respect for Dib's cleverness, for a human anyway, but he still intensely disliked him.

On the other hand, this female was feisty and amusing. After her escape attempt in the subway station he wasn't sure if he could really trust her not to try something like that again, but she _had_ come back to help him. Her actions demonstrated a sense of self-preservation, which he respected even if it was counterproductive for him. And it's not like there was anywhere for her to run to at this point.

She moved toward him and looked him in the eyes, eyes which no longer seemed as threatening and probing as they had just yesterday. He had been smiling at her and it completely changed his features. Maybe there really was something more to this creature after all. A thousand thoughts raced through her mind, not all of them worthy of approval, and she cast them aside. There would be a time when she would be forced to consider the implications of her thoughts, but not now.

Zim stared at Jex, unsure of her. At first he interpreted her continued gaze as that of a child gawking at a scientific specimen in a museum, but then he realized there was a different quality to her expression, a softer one that he was incapable of qualifying. He lacked the context of experience in which to place what he was seeing. The one thing he was sure of is that for the first time since he met her, she wasn't treating him as though she were afraid of him.

In his uncertainty, he remained frozen in place, arms crossed and still leaning his back against the glass wall of the dome while clutching his gloves in one of his bare hands.

Jex moved to stand in front of Zim, holding his gaze. She was only a few inches away from him now and she lowered her hands to take the gloves from him. Not once did she break contact with his hypnotizing red eyes as she gently pulled the gloves from him, dropped them to the floor and gingerly placed her fingers on one of his hands. She swallowed nervously and gave him a look that read, _is this okay?_ Without waiting for an answer, she uncrossed his arms and raised his hand between their bodies.

He could easily have stopped her for touching him uninvited, but he was intrigued by her boldness.

She looked at his fingers--three of them. Three fingers to a hand, one of them opposable very much like her own thumb. She knew this already, but seeing it up close was nothing short of incredible. This was her first glimpse of the skin beyond his face and it thrilled her for more reason than one. Not the least of which was the fact that at any moment he could decide that her behavior was intolerable and pin her to the wall.

_Like a butterfly on display,_ she thought.

Despite the danger, she looked at his hand and ran her finger along his exposed skin. It was very soft. His fingers tapered into points that very closely resembled talons, albeit more of a cross between her own jointed digits and the appendages she had seen on birds. She held his hand with one of hers and traced her fingers along his skin with the other, her heart pounding over the thrill of it. The smooth softness of his skin transitioned into his... claws, she supposed, but not like fingernails. She had never seen anything like it. Like _him_.

Jex glanced up at Zim and her stomach jumped into her throat when she saw that his antennae were vibrating again, more of a quiet hum than a wave, just like they did when she had applied the makeup of his disguise. She was most certainly on the edge of understanding what it meant, but her conscious mind wasn't ready to process it.

Realizing what she was looking at, he deliberately pressed his antennae down against his head and coughed. "Well, this is all very fascinating but I should probably get--"

"Did you kill those men out of self-defense?"

Zim was startled; her question came out of nowhere. "Yes," he answered matter-of-factly. "But I also enjoyed it."

She had no idea how to respond to that. Jex was learning the difficult lesson that nothing in life is black and white, least of all people. Even people from other planets, it would seem.

Crossing one arm over the other again and scratching his face with his free hand, Zim thought about her question and her apparent confusion over his response. Humans had a difficult time with bloodletting in the first place, let alone the pleasure most Irken military elite would experience in slaughtering the enemy. For Zim it was second nature, but for Jex, he could tell that the juxtaposition of their now moderately friendly conversation against his violent nature was messing with her head.

"I was bred for conquest," Zim said. "This is who I am."

Looking down at her own hand, Jex thought about the simplicity of believing that you would serve a singular purpose over the course of your life, never looking beyond that culturally-inflicted boundary. Was someone like Zim happy just fulfilling their duty? Could he experience real happiness in the first place? Did he ever wonder about life beyond the Irken military? Human emotions were confusing enough; she couldn't imagine trying to understand the emotions of someone from another world. And there was no way she could ask him these things.

Zim was staring out at the steam again, apparently lost in thought. Just as Jex was searching for a reason to excuse herself from a situation that was making her increasingly nervous, he spoke again.

"Yes, I do think I'm happy with my choice of location," he said with a self-satisfied smile. "For an elite Irken like myself, power is an addictive substance and volcanoes are an embodiment of it."

"It frightens the hell out of me," Jex confessed. "How do you know this thing isn't going to blow?"

"As I said earlier, it's perfectly safe. The computer is monitoring seismic activity in the area; we would be able to move in plenty of time. Invader Zim does not go into a situation unprepared."

She remained unconvinced, but wasn't about to argue with him.

"Ever seen a volcano up close before?" he asked.

"What, you mean aside from that time I was abducted by an alien?" she snapped bitterly.

Zim let out a hearty laugh, genuinely amused by her riposte. "Fair enough," he agreed. "What I meant was have you ever walked on the rim of a volcano?"

Raising an eyebrow, she answered, "Um, no. I'm sure I could count the number of people who _have_ on one hand."

He grinned. "Want to?"

* * *

Looking down at the skin-tight black and purple suit she was wearing in place of her own jeans and shirt, Jex was feeling increasingly unsure about what they were preparing to do. Sure, the technology was incredible--some kind of material that formed a vacuum seal around your body to protect you from the elements. At least, that's as much of Zim's long-winded explanation that she was able to understand. Ingenious, really, but she was feeling anything but confident about walking around on an active volcano. Outside. On a volcano.

She stopped studying her suit and looked up at Zim, who she was startled to see was about to shove some kind of metal contraption at her. It was a metal ring and it had been opened, much like one large handcuff. She backed up a little and said, "Heyyyy, whoa whoa, hang on there, what the hell _is_ that? It looks like a torture device."

Zim stopped and looked at it, confused. "No. You're going to want this, trust me," he said.

_Trust him?_ she thought. She certainly didn't, but she didn't have many options either. He obviously wanted to take her on this little joy ride or... outdoor stroll, she guessed, and refusing might only make him angry.

He took her silence for compliance and moved forward, snapping the metal ring around her neck without warning. It automatically resized to a snug fit, although it was only as mildly uncomfortable as a dog collar might be. She would become accustomed to it in a matter of minutes. Zim pushed a button on the side of the ring and it formed a seal attaching to the collar of her suit. He pushed a second button and a gossamer thin bubble appeared around her head, which then deflated to close in around her face.

Not expecting this, she panicked and flailed around, expecting to suffocate inside the material. Her hands flew up around her neck and face and tried clawing at whatever had closed in on her, but they only met her own skin. "What..." she stopped, completely bewildered, gasping repeatedly as though she expected to drown.

As Zim stared at her placidly, his own bubble seal emerged and formed around his head, enclosing him just as hers had.

You want to breathe, don't you?" he said. "This will prevent you from experiencing altitude sickness or inhaling noxious fumes from the volcano. You can calm down."

Jex slowly relaxed, still breathing a bit heavily from the anxiety of it all. She was irritated that he hadn't warned her, but then again he probably saw this as a routine much like brushing your teeth or going to the bathroom. _Or something like that,_ she thought.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath and exhaling to calm herself down. "Right."

Zim reached over to her neck piece and punched another button. A dark flash passed over her eyes momentarily.

"And what was that?" Jex asked.

"Eye protection," he answered. "You won't notice the difference, but the computer has registered that the light reflected on the surface of the mountain might blind sensitive eyes. That applies to both of us. Now let's go."

Zim gestured toward the door. It was an absurdity made of faux wood floating in the middle of the glass, but at least it made the exit obvious. He put his hand on the doorknob and opened the door. Curiously, there was no gust of wind and no steam crept past the threshold. "Coming?" he asked.

If he were to actually stop to ask himself why he was taking Jex outside to look at the volcano, he might come up with an answer that had something to do with easing the occasional monotony of his work, or trying to liven the mood, or being curious about the human reaction to being up close to a planet's raw power. It wouldn't have anything to do with him having enjoyed their brief conversation. It most _certainly_ would have nothing to do with wanting to spend time with her.

Jex walked tentatively to the door and peered outside without crossing the threshold. Swallowing nervously, she could feel beads of sweat starting to form on her forehead. "Yeah, I uh..." she stammered, staring wide-eyed at the flurry of white steam outside. For the first time she wondered if the steam was indicative of a forthcoming eruption, but Zim had assured her that they were safe. _He'd be in danger too, after all_, she thought.

Tearing her eyes away from the scene awaiting them, she looked at Zim with an incredible vulnerability. "What if I fall?"

Saying nothing, Zim turned toward the doorway. Reaching back, he grabbed her hand and gripped it tightly, reassuringly, and placed the palm of his other hand on an invisible barrier between them and the outside world. Jex had no time to spend in surprise over Zim's hand in hers, because the shield disappeared and they were immediately buffeted by a strong wind. A wind that normally would have ripped Jex's breath from her lungs, but that she seemed to be immune to other than feeling a little unsteady on her feet. Apparently Zim's Irken technology actually _was_ pretty impressive.

As Zim stepped forward, she took a deep breath and followed him. The sound of the wind was staggering in and of itself, let alone the sheer force of the constant gale. Jex now gripped Zim's hand very tightly, terrified that she was going to fall. What she hadn't told him was that she had an intense fear of heights that had crippled her with fear on numerous occasions; she didn't want to reveal such a weakness to someone who prided himself on his power.

Walking forward, she finally looked down at the ground beneath her feet. It was more substantial than she had feared, a hilly region rather than a true narrow edge to the cavernous mouth far to their right, but it was covered with snow and ice.

"ZIM!" she shouted over the roar of the wind. "It's pretty slippery!"

"Don't worry!" he yelled. "Just enjoy it!"

_Enjoy it_, she thought, taking another deep breath and closing her eyes to steel her nerves. Shifting her weight as she prepared to walk forward, she slipped a little. It wasn't enough to put her in any real danger, little more than slipping on a small patch of ice on the sidewalk, but it terrified her beyond measure. "Oh shit!" she shouted in panic, breaking free of Zim's hand and crouching down to the ground.

Zim looked at her curiously. "Is the view better down there, human?"

Shutting her eyes as tightly as a child afraid of the dark and ignoring Zim's quip, she reassured herself with the substantial feeling of keeping her center of gravity closer to the ground. "I'm not going to fall, I'm not going to fall, I'm not going to fall..." she was chanting quietly to herself.

Images of her sunlit lake flooded her mind as she smelled the comforting scent of that sweet, earthy aroma. She continued chanting quietly, doing her best to convince herself that her mantra was true, that no, she would fall. Neither into the mouth of the volcano nor off the side of the mountain. She would not fall, she would not fall... and that wonderful scent would keep her safe, memories of the lake and her father would keep her safe, there was nothing to be afraid of--

"There's nothing to be afraid of." Zim's voice was right next to Jex, startling her out of her meditation as he put one arm around her back, gripping her arm with the other, and urged her to stand up. "You're not going to fall."

Jex looked at him bending over her and realized again that the familiar scent she had been luxuriating in was coming from _him_.

Shaking her head vigorously, Jex insisted, "No, I can't, I can't--"

Using his great strength with a kindness she hadn't anticipated, Zim pulled her to her feet. She felt like her center of gravity wanted to be close to the ground and fought him, but in the end Zim successfully helped her to her feet as she gripped his arms to steady herself. Her knees remained bent as though she would sink back down to the ground at any moment, but he kept his hands on her arms as well to reassure her of her safety.

"Look," Zim said as he nodded his head toward the scene beyond the mountain, away from the center of the volcano, away from the steam.

Jex was staring at him, eyes wide with panic, trying desperately not to hyperventilate with fear. They were so _high_. "It's so..." _so high_, she started to say, but then looking into Zim's large red eyes, she found them unusually calming. Why would he be out here if it was dangerous? Would he let her fall? He was helping her now, but _could_ she trust him not to let her fall? He couldn't be all that invested in her well-being, but there didn't seem to be much point in bringing her out here just to let her fall...

Then Jex realized that the light hitting Zim's face started to take on a faint orange tinge.

Bracing herself, she straightened up and let go of his arms. She was determined not to continue succumbing to her weakness in front of him. Turning to look in the direction in which Zim had nodded, the view immediately took her breath away.

"Oh my god!" she gasped.

The computer had told her that they were on an island, but this was beyond anything she could have anticipated. The sun, the large and fiery god she knew and loved, slowly dipped below the horizon of the ocean. There was nothing to block her view of this magnificent sunset, neither the steam behind them nor land. Just open ocean beyond the island and the sun's deep glow burning a path across the water. "It's on fire," she said quietly. "The water is on fire." Emotion swept through her and she grabbed Zim's hand to steady herself again, this time feeling lightheaded from the sheer awe of it.

Looking over at Jex, Zim was genuinely... happy, was it? Or glad at least, glad to see she was enjoying their little outing. Part of him felt his ego inflated by the notion that his actions would incite such emotion in another, while another aspect of his mind found it a little disturbing that he should enjoy eliciting anything other than fear and subservience from an inferior alien creature.

They were silent, the wind howling a song around them and whipping Jex's ponytail around her face as the sun slipped away into its nightly resting place.

Twenty minutes later, when the sky was dark save for a soft glow of light emanating from behind the horizon, Jex wiped several tears from her cheeks and let go of Zim's hand. She turned to him with a distant but calm expression and asked, "Did you know? _How_ did you know?"

He knew what she was asking, but there was something left to show her. Smiling a little, he casually pointed toward the sky behind her and his eyes followed his own gesture.

Curious, she turned to look, met by a sight that could only have been described as heavenly. Otherworldly. Never in her life had she dreamed of such a mesmerizing vision of beauty, for dancing in the sky were smooth ribbons of colored light. A master artist had caressed the night with his paintbrush, leaving paths of illuminated beauty in its wake. The sky was on fire, exploding with color and magic. As people in her city were busy being plagued by thoughts of corporate deadlines and political scandal, they were unaware that this hypnotic display was illuminating their world. Jex felt so far removed from everything she had ever known. None of it mattered now.

Shifting his gaze from the aurora borealis to Jex, Zim could see that she had completely forgotten her fear. Arms outspread slightly, palms turned up, she seemed to be drinking in the light of the night sky. He felt moved by her reaction, her connection to the star that sustained the life on her planet. From the rays of the sun to the solar flares dancing above their heads, she was a creature of the light. Like so many things on this planet, Zim wasn't sure he even knew what to make of that, if he had anything to compare it to or any context in which to place it.

A small thought crept into his mind and nestled itself deep within his subconscious. Nothing more than a seed, but if cultivated it would grow into a dangerous thing: a question about his very nature. Having known nothing but the life of a soldier, a military researcher and an elite member of the Irken military, he had no idea what it meant to be bathed in light the way she was. No, not bathed in light, created in light. Glowing from the inside out. He wondered briefly if this was part of the human condition, or if it was unique to Jex.

She turned to him, face still stained with the remnants of tears. "I didn't think I'd say something like this to you, but thank you," she said with a faint smile. "Even if my life is short, I'll never forget this."

Zim felt a cold hand grip something deep within his chest. For the first time in his life, he was overcome with regret. She believed he would kill her, either deliberately or as a casualty of the impending invasion, and with good reason. That was his intention... no human would remain to clutter the surface of Earth once his elegant plan was realized.

Not even Jex would see the aurora borealis dance in the sky when he was finished with this place. His success was almost guaranteed in his mind, so what room was there for regret? Nevertheless, there was now a tiny loose thread in the fabric of his life, and if he tugged on it he knew he would unravel from the inside out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Capax Infiniti**

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 6**

Zim raised his hand toward an empty piece of space in front of him, placed his palm against an invisible barrier and the door to his arctic base opened to them. They stepped inside and felt a warm rush of air as the seal to the dome enclosed them in the safe haven of his lair.

Jex raised a finger to the neck piece that Zim had put on her, intending to release herself from the protective barrier around her head, but Zim stopped her. "No, wait," he said. "Let me do that; you might end up doing something stupid."

Lowering her hand, Jex let him approach her and push the correct button. Her vision glimmered briefly in front of her like looking through a haze of heat in the desert. Pushing a second button, the neck piece popped open and dropped into his waiting hand. He stole a glance at Jex, whose cheeks were still flushed with excitement.

"I can't believe we did that," she said with a smile, her thoughts still obviously lost somewhere in the sky. "It was incredible! Did you see the colors? I've never seen anything like it!"

"Yes, I saw them," he said, feeling uneasy. His words were clipped and unemotional, a complete change from his relatively warm manner when they were outside. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I need to get back to work now."

With that, he walked to his transport chute and disappeared quickly. Jex was left standing in the middle of the room with her purple and black excursion suit still on, stunned by everything she had just experienced and confused by Zim's suddenly frigid demeanor.

* * *

"Greetings, my Tallest," Zim said, saluting in front of the video feed in his lab with a confident grin. "You'll be pleased to know that I've officially moved into the last phase of my planning. The culmination of my invasion of Earth is imminent; you may want to head the fleet in this direction and witness the _glory_ of my conquest!"

Red peered into the screen with Purple standing next to him. "Zim, you've been on Earth for fifteen years," he began superciliously. "You're realize that the Irken military can only back an invader with the strong arm of the armada if success is absolute, don't you?"

"Oh, but it _is_!" Zim declared proudly. "Failure is not possible! And you'll want to be here to see this one, _trust_ me."

"I don't know..." Purple's voice was full of hesitation and he thought for a moment. Red and Purple conferred amongst themselves, obviously whispering and gesturing toward Zim as they spoke. Red shook his head with disdain and put his hand to his forehead.

"Zim," Purple said, clearing his throat. "We just remembered that we have an important, um, space... thing...y we have to look into first."

"Yes, a _space_ thingy," Red agreed enthusiastically, nodding. "Top secret, high priority stuff. Of course we couldn't _dream_ of keeping you from your important mission on Earth, Zim. So you just hang tight for awhile and... we'll be in touch!"

"But my Tallest, you said yourself that I've been here for fifteen years and--"

"Talk to you soon, Zim! Keep up the good work!"

The transmission ended. Zim continued staring at the white noise for a moment before sighing and putting his head in his hands, elbows resting on the communication console. The frustration was almost debilitating and despite popular opinion on his home planet, he wasn't an idiot. Yes, he had a sensitive ego and his pride was too great to ever acknowledge it to his colleagues or his leaders, but he knew that he was a running joke to his beloved Tallest. _That they see me as a plague on their great mission_, he mulled privately. Briefly, memories flashed before his eyes-- the Tallest laughing at his expense, being locked in restraints during his terrifying existence evaluation in front of the control brains on planet Judgmentia, the sickening sensation of his PAK being forcibly removed.

Shaking off the memories, he didn't want to dwell on the past. _This_ was his one opportunity to redeem himself and he knew he could do it if he was given the chance. Unfortunately, convincing them to do nothing more than show up for the invasion was proving more difficult than he had anticipated. This had easily been the fifth or sixth conversation of its kind and their lack of faith in him was still a bitter pill to swallow. He was beginning to realize he was truly on his own and would have to serve Earth to the Tallest on a silver platter, ripe for the sweep. He was comforted by the fact that he would execute his plans with impeccable precision. The Tallest would never again have a reason to doubt him.

"GIR!" Zim called, swiveling his seat to face a computer screen with a set of rotating blueprints on it.

The robotic assistant rounded a corner and toddled into the main room of the lab, feet clanging against the floor as he jovially swung his arms. "Master!" he said, mouth agape with joy. "You're so GREEN!"

"Uh huh," Zim dismissed the comment, entirely accustomed to GIR's eccentricities. "I need to make a few modifications to the Voot Cruiser and I don't want the human paying attention to my activities. I'm hopeful that she would be smart enough not to question me, but all the same I would prefer not to deal with the headache of her uncovering my... intentions for her species. You will distract her for me."

GIR's eyes flashed red and he saluted. "Yes, SIR." Suddenly he gasped, eyes quickly returning to their normal turquoise. "Cupcakes!!" He started to run toward the transport chute.

"Wait, GIR," Zim ordered.

Stopping mid-stride, GIR looked worried. "But the cupcakes..."

"Yes, yes, cupcakes. If the human asks about my activities, you know what you should do, right?"

"YEAH!" GIR replied with powerful enthusiasm.

"And what's that?"

"I don't know," GIR smiled.

"Exactly," Zim said, nodding. "Tell her you don't know. You're moronic enough that she'll believe you."

"Yay! I really don't know!"

"Yes you do, I told you three days ago."

"But you said I don't know..." GIR burst into melodramatic tears. "I'm so confused!"

Sighing, Zim turned back to his blueprints and waved his hand dismissively. "Clearly, you'll be fine. Just keep her occupied."

* * *

Again she was ten years old. Images flashed rapidly before Jex's eyes, propelling her through several successive moments in time. Sunlight pouring through the trees as she watched them whiz by through the window of their car. Her father explaining the nesting habits of several species of bird. The sound of leaves crunching beneath her feet as she hiked through the forest and identified poisonous plants. Lazily dipping her fingers into the cool water of the lake as her father paddled them along in their canoe. Waking up in the middle of the night to a strange sound and, with the bravery of the very young, slipping out of their tent to investigate. Touching the smooth, cold, iridescent metal she remembered only in her dreams. A rich scent filling her senses and turning to see--

Heart pounding, Jex awoke in a cold sweat. Dizzy with the disorientation of waking from a vivid dream, she put a hand to her head, making sure she didn't have a fever. Her temperature was perfectly normal, but she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she was on the edge of understanding something and it troubled her. As wakefulness replaced the last haunting images of her dreams, the potential revelation was slipping away. She had been experiencing this recurring dream lately and its plot seemed to be an amalgamation of the many summers she'd spent camping with her father. But then, that last part...

Jex realized she was being watched. Turning onto her side on the couch, she met two large cerulean eyes on a metallic face.

"Cupcakes!" GIR exclaimed happily when he saw that she was awake.

Sensible conversation was confusing for her upon first waking, but this was on another level entirely. "I'm sorry, what?" She yawned and added. "What cupcakes, GIR?"

* * *

Completing a final set of calculations, Zim touched the input button on the screen of the computer and sat back in his chair. After staring at the flickering images in front of him for a minute, a satisfied smile spread across his face and he began to chuckle to himself. The chuckle grew steadily louder until he was awash with a giddiness that consumed him completely. He laughed triumphantly, unabashedly, leaning his head back against the head rest of the chair and pounding his fist against the arm a few times as he bellowed. Had anyone been observing, they would have had a difficult time discerning whether he found something hilariously amusing or he was caught in a moment of pure exaltation.

It was done. The blueprints for his plan danced across the screen, elegantly, flawlessly complete. There would be no failure this time. The respect he would command from his peers and, yes, even the Tallest, would make his past blunders as irrelevant as the humans themselves when he was finished with them. He had even devised a very special role for a certain human he had come to positively loathe.

Killing Dib would not be enough, or the pitiful human would have been dead a very long time ago. Zim was under the impression that Dib believed himself above retaliation, that he believed he had maneuvered his way out of Zim's grasp thanks to his own cleverness and intellect. The idea that a single human child, albeit now an adult, would be capable of thwarting genuine attempts on his life from a mighty Irken Invader was beyond laughable. Nevertheless, for inflicting constant, consistent and unrelenting irritation on Zim throughout their oh so _pleasant_ acquaintance, there would be a very special kind of vindication.

The excitement was too much to bear, the beauty of his genius almost too great to behold, and so all he could do with the building restlessness was laugh until his body ached. Very soon he would be able to channel that anxious energy into the execution of his plan.

Suddenly, GIR shot out of one of the transport tubes and slid across the floor, giggling and buzzing with frenetic energy. "HEEHEEheheheheeeee! I love it so muuuuch! It's a nice ride."

Still laughing loudly, Zim gradually pulled himself together, looking at GIR. He still chuckled occasionally in the way that one might after hearing a particularly gripping joke, one that grabs the reins of your imagination and won't let go even as you try to turn to other thoughts. "GIR, there you are!" he said with a smile inspired by his good mood, letting out his last few little huffs of laughter. "What were you doing?"

"Keepin' the lady busy!"

"GIR, that was eight hours ago. I was finished working on the Cruiser after about three of them. I even told you when I came back inside."

"But I had to make my cupcakes..." GIR replied distractedly as he sat on the floor and played with his own legs.

"You mean to tell me you've been tormenting the human this _entire_ time?" Zim asked, not sure if he should be delighted or horrified.

"Uh huh," GIR nodded, tongue sticking out. "We made us some cupcakes!"

"GIR, what did you do?!" Zim shouted. As nightmarish visions of a volcano full of baked goods filled his mind, he decided it was time to check in on his captive.

* * *

Zim stepped out of the transport chute in the kitchen and gawked at the sight before him. All of the cabinets were open and full of cupcakes. Cupcakes of varying sizes, colors, consistencies and shapes swarmed on the counters, in the sink, on the floor around the counters, on the table, on three of the chairs and on top of the stove. Two large piles of cupcakes spilled over into the living room. The air in the kitchen smelled sickly sweet, as though the walls themselves were coated in a layer of sugar and icing. On the one chair free of cupcakes sat Jex, whose arms and head were sprawled on the table, surrounded by one particularly purple battalion of the cupcake army. Flour dusted her hair and she had a few small smears of icing on her face. She was dead asleep.

_All that human does is sleep_, Zim observed.

GIR came shooting up out of the transport and immediately dove into a pile of cupcakes, munching happily on whatever happened to find its way into his cavernous mouth.

"Jex," Zim said, bending over the human and poking her in the arm.

Stirring slowly and opening her eyes, Jex looked at the alien standing over her. She blinked a few times, lifted her head and stretched her arms across the table in an effort to pop her stiff back. She immediately stopped as she knocked several cupcakes off of the table and just sat back in the chair instead.

"So," she said as she stretched her back again, obviously physically exhausted. "I take it your day wasn't anywhere near as... interesting as mine."

"_I_ was productive," he replied and surveyed the room again. "but it would seem that GIR kept you occupied well enough."

"I tapped out after about five hours of baking, Zim. Do you know what it's like to spend five hours baking with a manic robot? I don't even bake at home. I barely cook."

A series of brief images flickered through Zim's head, memories of mind-numbing stretches of time during which he was forced to endure some of GIR's more obnoxious personality traits. Not the least of which was his six month voyage from Irk to Earth that almost resulted in Zim disassembling GIR before they had even arrived. "Yes, I have some idea."

"So, Zim," Jex began, clearing her throat. She was hesitant to prod him about her place here, but she couldn't help wondering about the point of having her bake cupcakes with GIR and sleep her time away. The baking marathon was one of the most absurdly surreal things she had ever experienced and she felt entitled to a few answers.

"Are you really going to keep me here?" she asked.

Irritated by her inquisitiveness, Zim narrowed his eyes and pierced her with the ferocious gaze she remembered from the night he first took her prisoner. "Are you questioning _my_ decisions?"

Jex sunk against the back of the chair, trying to blend in with the furniture. Even barely an inch taller than her, he was terrifying when he was angry. She suspected some of her fear could be attributed to his cruelty on the subway, which still haunted her thoughts. Her life had been as peaceful as most who lived in the privileged ignorance of the first world; most of the violence she had seen had been on television and film. Of course, there was also the fact that he was, quite simply, an extraterrestrial being and she had no way of predicting his behavior. To attribute him with human qualities would be a mistake.

"I'm not," she sighed. "I'm really not. I just can't help wondering..." she trailed off for a moment and looked toward the glass wall of the dome surrounding the base. "I mean, what are you doing down there? Why are we out here?"

Zim wondered if the human need to sate one's curiosity was stronger than a sense of self-preservation, since he had made it clear several times that interrogating him wasn't the wisest course of action. His robotic spider legs emerged from his PAK and unfurled behind him. Looming over Jex, one of the legs stabbed one of the many purple cupcakes sitting in front of her, sending a thin split down the center of the table that almost cleaved it in half.

Jex tried to scoot her body back in her chair but had already been pushing herself as far into her seat as she could, nervous about inquiring into his activities. Now she was once again faced with his apparently erratic, angry behavior. One of these days she was going to get herself seriously injured or killed. Perhaps today.

Zim glared at her, staring intensely into her eyes. She got under his skin when she asked these questions. He bore his eyes into her, waves of his incredulity pouring off of him and making their way into her mind, or at least her expression seemed to suggest as much. As he scowled, one of his metal appendages swept the cupcakes off of the chair behind him and onto the floor. He pulled back and raised himself onto the chair to sit down, three of the spider legs retracting into his PAK as the fourth handed the cupcake to him. Zim took it and the last of the legs folded into the PAK.

Jex wondered if her rising and falling anxiety levels would kill her via cardiac arrest long before any cataclysmic event wiped the planet clean.

"As I said before, you're in no position to question me," Zim stated, holding the cupcake. "I already told you that I'm preparing to invade Earth. That's more than enough information," Zim stated. Preparing to bite the pastry, he paused to add, "I don't like it when humans get so complacent that they underestimate me."

A stifled snort of laughter escape Jex's lips and she immediately covered her mouth with her hand. A panicked expression flashed across her face as she realized her mistake.

Zim was about to taste one of GIR's cupcake delights, but was now momentarily frozen, utterly shocked by her audacity. Laughing? At _Zim_? He threw the cupcake violently against the wall and it became a saccharine Pollock tribute. Two of his spider legs quickly shot out of his PAK again. Leaping toward her chair, he knocked it backward onto the floor, the back of the chair and her head simultaneously slamming against the hard kitchen tile. She shouted in pain, scrambling clumsily in her dizziness and trying to crawl out of the odd, toppled position she was in. Before she could get very far, the legs suddenly appeared on either side of her head and stabbed the floor, splitting the tile. Turning onto her back, she was trapped between the arachnid limbs and under Zim, whose face hovered over hers in a menacing glower.

"You dare LAUGH AT ME?" he boomed, grabbing her jaw. His grip gradually tightened and he spoke in a low growl. "Maybe I should rip your jaw from your skull and feed your tongue to the volcano so that you're incapable of verbal insolence."

Trembling under him, Jex tried to shake her head and fought back tears of pain. His hands were very strong and the claws at the end of his fingers were piercing her skin, steadily probing deeper into the curves of her face. She could feel small, warm trickles of blood dripping down either side of her head and neck.

"I wasn't," she struggled to say, looking him in the eye, lip trembling as she tried to contain her fear. Speaking was excruciating with his sharp fingers digging so deeply into her face.

"YOU LIE," he bellowed, gripping her with scathing fervor, sinking his claws a little deeper into her jaw line.

"No," she said quietly. "No! Zim," she squeezed her eyes shut briefly and winced in pain, trying once again not to succumb to her fear. "The idea of underestimating you is laughable, you said people underestimate you. I just, I thought," she stuttered, starting to panic again as thoughts of the slaughtered government agents crept into her mind. "I'm afraid," she admitted. "I laughed because I'm afraid."

Zim looked down at her with caustic suspicion, examining her for any trace of deception. Bringing his face closer to hers, he wanted to scare her into total submission so that her curiosity would not lead to further prying. _Yes, fear me_, he thought.

He lowered his mouth to her ear while supporting himself with one hand next to her neck and the two spider legs on either side of her head, his other hand still firmly clutching her jaw. He let out a low laugh against her ear as his plans for this soggy planet danced through his mind. She had no idea what she was dealing with.

Jex's heart pounded a fiery tattoo inside her chest. He was unpredictable, megalomaniacal and short-tempered. Having him this close to her again was chilling, especially when he made such sinister threats. She let out a whimper and then pressed her lips together to silence herself. Where was the gentle one who had shown her the arctic sky? Did both he and this murderous creature really exist inside the same being?

"If I told you of my work, you would be plagued with such nightmares that you would never sleep again," Zim warned into her ear. "Do you really want to know?"

Mind racing, Jex shook her head quickly. She did want to know but she wasn't about to elicit more sadism from him.

Zim drew back and peered at her, loosening his hold on her. He was about to arrogantly congratulate her on her wise decision, but he was surprised to find that as soon as he looked at her face, all of his vitriol had drained from him as quickly as it had filled him. In its place was a sinking, sick feeling. He was awash with a sense of embarrassment that he had allowed himself to lose his composure.

And something more.

When he was bending over her with the intention of pouring fear into her ear, a warm rush had raced through his body not unlike the emotional surge he felt when having completed the design of his plan. Unlike the glee of triumph, this feeling was less giddy, more subtle and penetrating. The feelings she elicited in him were unnerving, and now he was left with a trembling mass of human jelly underneath him and no desire to torment her further.

_What is he thinking?_ Jex wondered, fear permeating her entire being. His face was completely unreadable, and his alien features didn't help much. If Zim stared at her any longer, she believed her own eyes would burn away in their sockets. She didn't know why she kept opening her mouth and spewing stupid remarks; she needed to learn to keep herself in check. It was just so hard to be here without any idea of what the next five minutes will bring, let alone what her future might hold.

Zim's eyes glanced toward the deep wounds his claws had made on the side of her face. Blood, now drying into a dark maroon crust, streaked across her jaw and neck where he had inadvertently smeared it with his hand.

"Come with me," he ordered as he got up, arachnid components retreating to their hiding place.

Momentarily left lying on the floor on her back, Jex felt too numb to move. She wiped her face with her hands as if to rid herself of the terror of believing she had been inches away from losing the lower half of her face. How long would she be able to handle being under this kind of stress without breaking?

"Get up and come on," Zim ordered impatiently from somewhere behind her head.

Flipping over onto her stomach and getting up, Jex moved her jaw a little as it throbbed, the ghost of Zim's grip still haunting it. She saw that he wanted her to follow him into the transport tube.

"Down there?" she asked.

"You ask stupid questions," he snapped as he walked up to her, grabbed her arm and moved her forcefully toward the tube. "Get in."

Jex moved toward the unfamiliar elevator, noticing GIR curled up in a pile of cupcakes, covered in icing. He appeared to be comatose, but she couldn't imagine that a robot would need sleep. Either way, apparently he had been oblivious to or unfazed by the violent scene he had witnessed.

Tentatively, Jex stepped inside the transport.

"Computer," Zim said.

"Yes, Zim."

"Clean up this mess and have GIR help you."

The computer sighed audibly before sending Jex, followed by Zim, down into the lab.

When she emerged, Jex saw a large room decked in an array of what looked like computers and electronic equipment. Several hallways split off from the main room and there seemed to be several transport chutes connected to this place. She tried to take it all in but the unearthly feel of it was overwhelming.

"This way," Zim said as he walked past her, leading her toward one of the hallways that emptied into another otherworldly lair.

They entered a room with numerous large, cylindrical glass enclosures lining the walls with various tubes emerging from them and snaking off into several directions. She walked up to one of the cylinders and placed her hand on the glass, peering inside. A hole sat in the bottom of the floor. There was nothing actually inside the enclosure but it filled her with a strong sense of foreboding. She could not tear her eyes away from it.

"Sit here," Zim ordered, snapping her out of her wonder. He was gesturing toward a small table on one side of the room.

Hoisting herself up onto the table, legs dangling off the side, she couldn't help but be reminded of countless uncomfortable doctor visits in their sterile examination rooms, freezing while waiting in her underwear for the medical personnel to arrive.

Zim had a cloth and a small device in his hand that looked like a thick pen or a laser pointer. He moved so that he was standing in front of her and he began examining her face where his claws had punctured the skin.

"Your planet is so overrun with _germs_," he said with obvious revulsion as he studied her skin with calculating precision. "I would rather not deal with you being infected by some _disgusting_ Earth plague because you're wandering around in here with open wounds."

Jex felt it wise to remain silent.

Tapping something on the device, one end slid open and he moved it in the air close to her injured face. He first floated it along one side of her jaw and then around to the other, passing over the skin of her neck as well. Zim looked at the side of the pen and appeared to be reading. Apparently satisfied, he tapped something else on the device and the other end flashed a green concentrated beam of light.

Zim pointed the device at the three large puncture wounds consecutively, holding it over each one for roughly ten seconds. The skin on Jex's face sizzled slightly under the beam of light and she cringed, but the wounds healed themselves and closed. Fortunately, the device had not found any internal injuries to Jex's jaw, no dislocation or loose teeth. Zim had concentrated most of his venomous grip in the tips his fingers.

He put the device down and picked up the cloth he had brought to the table. Lifting it to Jex's face, he wiped it slowly and firmly across her skin, down her jaw, along her neck and across to the other side. As he lifted it from her face, Jex marveled that she could see dry blood on the cloth but the material itself was otherwise completely dry. Even the simplest aspects of his alien technology were amazing to her in their unfamiliarity.

Zim leaned in closer to examine his work, holding Jex's jaw and turning her head so that he could see each puncture wound closely. Once again he was close enough to her to make her nervous, but he was healing her this time. What would it be next time? Kindness or cruelty? Were his apparently gentle gestures indeed inspired by kindness or were they somehow self-serving? Or both?

He could see that the wounds would still be visible, probably forming permanent scars on either side of her face. Inferior human biology, obviously. His hand turned her face toward him a little so that he could look at the one puncture wound closer to her chin. It was then that he suddenly became hyperaware of their close proximity. Again that warm rush coursed through his body and he had to make a conscious effort to keep his antennae rigidly at attention instead of allowing them to settle into a quiet hum. It was starting to upset him, the fact that this human was affecting him in any way to begin with, let alone in a way that was so repugnantly unacceptable.

Jex was battling with her own issues while he examined her face and she swam in the scent of his skin and his breath. She felt lightheaded and disturbed by how intensely his presence affected her. Not more than thirty minutes ago he was making promises of mutilating her face and now she was again comforted by his closeness? This was _ridiculous_. Just because he was healing her wounds, just because he was calm and collected, didn't mean she should let down her guard. He had demonstrated his volatile nature on numerous occasions; this Dr. Jekyll still housed a very dangerous Mr. Hyde.

Having heard of that psychological condition in which people empathized with their captors, Jex wondered whether she might be drawn to the very power that frightened her. She couldn't remember what it was called but she knew it could elicit very strange reactions in the people who fell victim to it. Of course, she was too appalled by the idea to consider it seriously. Her life had been so vanilla up to this point that it was absurd to think she would be enticed by something that twisted.

She then noticed that he was completely still, his hand still touching her jaw but no longer tilting her head this way and that to examine it. He had simply stopped, his face very close to hers, holding his position. The air between them tingled with an invisible electricity. Jex felt her body tense from within and it froze her in place. Although Zim held himself very still, she saw that his torso was expanding and contracting more rapidly than usual. It was not the rise and fall of the chest that she was accustomed to in her fellow humans, but she was inclined to think he was nervous or uneasy. Could he _get_ nervous?

Zim realized she was looking at him; he knew his body was betraying his state of mind. Her eyes were burning holes into his face, but he tried to ignore her stare. He was afraid that if he moved he'd do something irrational. Or that he might once again become filled with rage and kill or maim her if he let himself. How dare she make him so uncomfortable? It was preposterous that he continually allowed this human to infiltrate his mind.

_You know that's not true,_ some dark piece of his subconscious insisted.

He jumped suddenly, startled, when he felt her hand on his face. _What in Tallest's name is she doing?_ he thought. He moved his hand to firmly grab hers with the intention of removing it from his face; however, when he did so he made the mistake of caving into temptation by turning his head to look her in the eye. He wanted to order her not to touch him, but she was looking at him piercingly and they were so close that he could feel her breath.

His fingers gripped hers tightly in both anger and desperation. He was unprepared for a situation like this. Nothing in his military training, nothing in his programming, nothing in his life experience had prepared him for it. All of the theoretical study he had managed on the subject of human relations said nothing about... this. Whatever _he_ was doing. Or whatever was happening _to_ him. Most certainly because the idea of even mild interest in a human was an abomination that only a defective would be susceptible to.

Panic flooded him as Jex's other hand boldly reached up and around his torso, pulling his body close to hers between her knees as she sat on the table. His hand still gripped hers but he had forgotten what he meant to do. The fingers of his other hands still lightly touched her face and neck as they hung in limbo. His mind was jumping in and out of his body as he struggled back and forth between trying to process the situation and wanting to extricate himself.

Jex had no idea what she was doing. Her mind was a frenzied, jumbled mess: _oh my god what am i doing this is sick what am i doing--_

In spite of herself, Jex felt a flood of heat race from the tips of her toes and through her body, up between her legs and to the top of her head, making her feel as though she would pass out. _What in God's name am I doing?_ she thought. Why in God's name did he excite her so much, why did she always want to touch him? How _could_ she want to touch him after his murderous outbursts? What kind of sick person desires someone who had inflicted cruelties on both her and her kind? What kind of twisted mind felt drawn to an alien with nefarious intentions? Was she just excited by his otherness? Was this some hidden, disturbed psychological condition rearing its ugly head?

She closed her eyes and felt herself overcome with vertigo. A part of her slipped and she let herself fall into her compulsions.

Zim pressed his antennae firmly against his head as he felt Jex's lips brush his.

_WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS THE VILE HUMAN DOING_, his mind protested incoherently. The physical sensation of simply not being completely disgusted by her paralyzed him while his mind fought with his programming. A back and forth internal struggle over how to handle the situation resulted in total inaction. He was frozen. Paralyzed. Stunned.

Her lips were barely touching his, their breath mingling.

_Don't open your eyes_, Jex told herself. Her heart pounded in her chest as several images flashed into her mind in rapid succession: his hand on her thigh, their bodies pressed together, his tongue licking her neck, her hands roaming over his unfamiliar body. She shuddered and gripped his shirt just under his PAK as her mind overloaded.

"Incoming transmission," the computer said as a beep issued from the speakers overhead.

Zim and Jex were jolted violently out of their mutually hypnotic states. They pulled back just enough to look at each other in a daze.

Putting one hand around Jex's neck and tracing his thumb along her jaw line, he spoke quietly, not moving away. "I fixed it," he said. He looked as though he was going to say something else, but then the computer prodded him again.

"Incoming transmission from the Tallest, Zim."

This seemed to prompt Zim to action. "Computer, transport Jex back into the house," he said, immediately pulling himself away from her and turning toward the main room of the lab. Whatever had been moved inside of him was again under tight lockdown.

"Use the transport tube all the way to the left," he said to Jex as he left the room, not looking back. "And go help GIR clean up the mess you made."

The next time she saw him, everything changed.


	7. Chapter 7 Abridged

**Capax Infiniti**

Disclaimer: Invader Zim and its characters are, of course, property of Jhonen Vasquez and his fantastic production team. Any resemblance my original characters might bear to real individuals is purely coincidental.

* * *

**Chapter 7 (Abridged)  
**

_ O Rose, thou art sick!  
The invisible worm  
That flies in the night,  
In the howling storm, _

_ Has found out thy bed  
Of crimson joy:  
And his dark secret love  
Does thy life destroy._

-William Blake

* * *

The steam swirled delicately around the dome of Zim's base. Sitting next to the glass wall, Jex leaned the side of her head against the cool barrier between herself and the harsh environment outside, fidgeting absent-mindedly with the denim of her jeans. With each exhalation, her breath blew patterns of fog on the glass. It had been several days since she abruptly parted ways with Zim in the depths of his lab and she had not seen him since. Truth be told, it could have been four, five, six days, even a week-- Jex had lost track of time completely. One day melted into the next as her mind whirled like a dust devil, the white noise of the volcano remained a static backdrop, and she slept a great majority of her time away. She allowed herself to frequently drift off into sleep both out of boredom and, unbeknownst to her conscious mind, as a coping mechanism. She slept on the couch, on the floor, next to the window, near the doorway, at the kitchen table, even in the bathtub. The combination of endless days, monotonous scenery and total absence of communication with the outside world had the power to drive her mad if it were given enough time.

When she was awake, she spent most of her time either being pseudo-entertained by GIR, eating something small or staring out of the seamless window that surrounded every room of the house. In the rare moments when the steam outside died down, she was able to catch a glimpse of the sky. She waited for it with bated breath if it seemed that the volcano's never-ending effluvial aspirations were dissipating even the smallest bit. Variation in any form was a welcome respite from the tedious sameness that saturated almost every waking moment.

A couple of times szhe attempted to take a shower, but without any real soap to speak of the only viable option was to ask GIR to show her how to use the Irken cleansing chalk. While it fulfilled its intended purpose, using it was counterintuitive and it did not grant her the same immaculate feeling of cleanliness she was accustomed to. Not to mention the fact that she would have given just about anything for even a cheap shampoo and conditioner to take care of her long, now increasingly dull hair. She combed it with her fingers but it felt constantly unkempt and matted. More often than not she just kept it in a ponytail with the one hair band she happened to always keep in her pocket.

At least she smelled okay thanks to the chalk. As a matter of fact, the chalk seemed to have completely neutralized her scent, at least as far as she was able to discern with her human senses.

Sleep was interrupted by repetitive, fitful dreams and an occasional loud noise from the lab deep underground. Zim's activities were a complete mystery; ever since he had received the transmission from the Tallest, he hadn't emerged from the zealous immersion in his work. Whatever he was doing, it consumed him completely and occasionally caused him to erupt in loud fits of either triumphant laughter or bellows of frustration. She could hear these outbursts floating up into the main house from below, reminders that he was indeed still there and hard at work on projects that completely eluded her. Something sinister brewed under her feet.

Occasionally he would end up outside and she'd see him walking around the spaceship he called a Voot Cruiser, tinkering with it or... something. Emerging only long enough to attend to the vehicle, he disappeared quickly back into the depths of the mountain where he presumably resumed his work. A few times he actually took off in it and came back many hours later; each time she wondered if he would come back at all.

While she most often devoted her thoughts to ideas about what Zim's activities might entail, she also found herself brooding about their last interlude in the lab. In retrospect, she was embarrassed and a little bit horrified that he had affected her as intensely as he did. That she could desire something so alien, someone so inherently other to her, was alarming enough, but she shuddered to think that she could be tempted by a creature who wanted to exterminate her own people. How could that be possible? How could she be enticed by a genocidal maniac? Furthermore, how could her mind wander in that direction when there were far more important issues to be concerned with? Shouldn't she be thinking of ways to stop him? She still had loved ones out there and they were oblivious to what awaited them. Shouldn't that be her primary concern? Her _only_ concern?

Now, sitting there with her head against the glass, these ruminations floated in and out of her conscious mind as she tuned out GIR's endless voice. He had been talking at her for hours, usually babbling nonsensically. Right now he was telling her stories of their past exploits on Earth, although she took most of it with a grain of salt, considering the source. She assumed that when GIR emphasized the color of a dog or the taste of a snack in one of his recollections, he wasn't exactly honing in on the relevant details of the story. Initially she had been very interested in hearing about their adventures, but it wasn't long before she figured out that she wasn't gleaning any real information from him. In fact, it was all but impossible to follow his trains of thought.

"...the big-headed boy. I WAS ON TV!" GIR exclaimed and spun around several times before sitting down in front of Jex again.

"TV, right. That's great, GIR," Jex said unenthusiastically as she realized he was indeed _still_ talking to her.

"And then this one time I rode on Mars and Master squished a poop can," GIR shared.

Still staring out of the window, Jex nodded. "Uh huh, Mars. I'm sure that was great too."

"It would have worked had the filthy human not interfered," Zim chimed in.

The sound of his voice seemed to have emerged unexpectedly from the air immediately behind Jex and she nearly jumped out of her own skin, bumping her head against the glass in the process. "Ow. Zim!" she said in surprise as she looked over her shoulder at him and rubbed her head. She started to get up. "I didn't hear you come in here."

"Of course not, you don't have antennae. And sit back down," Zim said with his mouth full as he leaned his back against the glass next to her, slid down to a sitting position and bent his legs at the knees. He held a small pouch in one hand and had some kind of stick hanging out of his mouth.

GIR walked to where Zim was, curled up underneath the inverted V of his legs and went to sleep.

"He talks to me for hours, then you show up and he's lulled to sleep. Amazing," Jex laughed. Then she shifted her weight a little and leaned her head against the glass again, looking at Zim. She knew she shouldn't feel this way, but the detached part of her mind, the piece of herself that observed her own actions and emotions like an uninvolved third party, realized that she was far more comfortable in his presence than she had been in the past. Something had changed over the past few days and she wasn't sure if it was just the complacency of having been in his base for an extended period of time, the memory of his past mercy, or the undefined moment that had transpired between them, but she could feel that the dynamic had mutated. Whether or not that would bode well for her had yet to be determined.

Dipping the stick into the pouch he was holding, Zim pulled it out covered in what looked like sugar and popped it back into his mouth, lolling his head toward Jex while keeping it rested against the glass. His posture and demeanor suggested that he was completely exhausted, mentally even if not physically. He spoke with his mouth full again. "He's always been--"

"Is that Fun Dip?!" Jex interrupted.

"Huh?" Zim said, pulling the stick out of his mouth and looking at it. "Fun... Dip...?" With a raised eyebrow, he examined his snack.

Jex laughed again. "That's exactly what it looks like. It was a kind of candy I ate as a kid, it's basically a sugar stick that you lick and dip in a packet of powder sugar. You know, one of many ingenious ways to energize a kid to the point of hysteria."

Zim looked at his treat again. "It's not a 'Fun Dip', it's an Irken snack."

"Is it made of sugar?" Jex asked, genuinely curious.

He tipped the packet toward her nonchalantly and gestured a little. "Want to try?"

Taken aback for a moment, Jex just looked at him.

He kept holding it out to her and again gestured for her to try it.

"Um... okay," Jex said tentatively. She looked mistrustful, but she hesitantly licked her finger and poked it into the packet. When she pulled it out, the tip of her finger was covered in a light purple powdery substance. The fleeting thought that cocaine or heroin could just as easily be a delightful afternoon Irken snack momentarily crossed her mind, but at this point she almost didn't care. She looked at Zim with a raised eyebrow of her own and then tasted it.

"Is it a 'Fun Dip'?" he asked.

"Actually... yeah, I think it is," Jex said, grinning. "Something close to it, anyway. Who would've thought?"

Apparently unimpressed, Zim dipped his sugar stick in the packet again and then put it back into his mouth, a little bulge forming in his green cheek.

Having been bored out of her mind, Jex scrambled to think of a way to keep Zim engaged long enough for her to have some kind of coherent conversation. She wasn't an extremely social person by nature, but humans weren't meant to live in isolation. She needed contact with other sentient beings at least to some degree, and although GIR was certainly gregarious enough, he wasn't exactly intellectually stimulating.

Zim tilted his head a little while sucking on his snack and looked at Jex. She was staring out the window, one leg bouncing nervously. By the look of it, she was unaware that she was betraying her own anxiety with her fidgeting. She was on edge about something. He couldn't exactly blame her; even when he took an occasional break from his laborious engagement, he deliberately avoided Jex because she unsettled _him_. It was only when his mind finally pleaded with him for a real, solid break in concentration that he condescended to grace the prisoner with his presence. Or at least he rather liked to think of it that way.

Another part of him took perverse pleasure in knowing that she was probably squirming inside her own skin all this time while he assiduously attended to developing the technical pieces of his design. Making her wait, stew in her captivity and contemplate her fate was his way of perpetuating the fear he had instilled in her from the beginning. In part it was also punishment for the way she had so audaciously breached his personal space. Of course, it was also far easier to gnash his teeth in resentment than it was to confront the fact that he had felt anything when she had touched him.

"So," Jex began, clearing her throat. "What's this about Mars? I haven't heard much about that planet since it fell out of orbit when I was a kid."

"Huh?" Zim's attention had been elsewhere. "Mars? Oh that's right, GIR was talking to you about that, wasn't he?"

"_Talking_ would be putting it in loose terms, but yes," Jex said. "He's been regaling me with stories of your past adventures." She grinned. "I've heard more about how things tasted along the way than anything else, which is a unique perspective to say the least. I didn't know you were interested in the other planets, though."

Zim pulled the candy stick out of his mouth and dropped it into the packet. "I heard about this face on Mars people were always talking about," Zim recalled, staring off in no particular direction. His eyes remained glazed over as his memory traveled back in time to some of his first attempts to annihilate life on planet Earth. "It seemed like a good idea to investigate it. You know, see what I might find that could aid me in my noble mission."

Jex was rapt with attention, curious to hear about this alien's activities on and around her world. All this time he had been here and she was blissfully unaware. She grew from a little girl into a woman, her self-involved goals centered around figuring out what she wanted to do with her life, and meanwhile he secretly plotted the demise of her species. To think of him trying to exterminate her people like pestilent cockroaches while she ignorantly went about the trivial business of daily life was mind-blowing.

"Turns out that Mars is a giant spaceship," he went on.

"Wait, stop," Jex raised her hands in front of her incredulously. "What?"

Zim rocked his head to the side a little to look at Jex, still leaning his head against the glass wall. "I was surprised too. Being an Irken Invader, I've seen a lot in my time. After all, a life like mine is truly extraordinary; there isn't much that amazes me." He seemed incapable of talking about himself in mundane terms. "But a spaceship planet? That was a new one. And did you know the Marsoids were a race of instruction manuals?"

"Huh?" Jex was beyond confused.

"Yeah, weird," Zim said, mistaking her tone for surprised understanding instead of total bewilderment. He stirred the stick around in the sugar packet and then popped it back into his mouth, muffling his speech again. "Anyway, so Mars is a giant spaceship. My idea to put the planet to good use was nothing short of brilliant, of course. GIR and I steered Mars toward Earth and then I slowed it down just enough so that I could slide it across the surface of your planet and squish the entire biosphere into extinction." His hands gesticulated in demonstration with the air of a war veteran who was reliving the glory days.

Jex's eyes widened in what Zim first took to be amazement, admiration, fear or disbelief over his ingenious plan. Rendered speechless by his brilliance, of course. As she continued to stare at him and her eyes started to water ever so slightly, he observed her posture, the tension in the muscles around her mouth, the way the corners of her eyes were twitching and wrinkling just so. The impudent human was not stunned into amazed silence; no, she was _stifling laughter_.

His blood started to boil and his antennae stiffened against his head, rigid with resentment. The Tallest had the same reaction to him those many years ago when he had transmitted a simulation of his plan to them. Rather than show him the gratitude he so desired, they had laughed at him. Mocked him. As these memories coursed through his brain and the bitter taste of a bruised ego filled his mouth, Zim became increasingly incensed. He bit his sugar stick in half indignantly and crunched its remains between his teeth, glaring at her with narrowed eyes.

Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, Jex knew she had to restrain her laughter because this was exactly how she had gotten herself into such serious trouble last time. Honestly though, how could she _not_ be amused by the idea of eradicating Earth's biosphere by "squishing" it with another planet? The idea of this powerful alien going to such great lengths to destroy her home was indeed terrifying, so it wasn't that she believed him incapable. It was perhaps his use of the word "squish", or maybe the mental image of Zim riding the planet Mars like a vehicle, or just the fact that with all of this incredible technology and intelligence at his disposal, he came up with the strangest ideas. Whatever the reason, she was having one hell of a time trying to remain cool and it was obvious to her that she was tapping into his choleric tendencies again.

"Zim," she said, trying desperately not to betray her amusement, to keep herself calm and composed. "You are by far one of the most creative people I've ever met." She let out a measured exhalation clearly intended to settle her nervous energy and pressed her lips together as she tried not to laugh. "I don't think that idea would have occurred to anyone else."

This took Zim by surprise and he looked at her suspiciously. Creative? Had an adjective like that ever even crossed his mind? He was a genius, yes. A scientific mastermind, yes. The future hero of the Irken empire, most certainly. The evil prodigy who would become the sole harbinger of chaos, absolutely. But creative?

He stared at her, noticing how hard she was trying to keep herself composed, and suddenly he was overwhelmed with the realization that yes, his plan had been extremely... innovative. Unconventional. That few people, Irken or otherwise, would have been able to devise such an unexpected assault on Earth. What other brilliant mind would conceive of riding Mars across the Earth's surface in a slow attempt to squash life into a bloody mess?

Furthermore, if he were honest with himself he would have admitted that the moment Mars had touched down on Earth's surface, he knew it was a plan that was destined to fail. Not only would he have taken far too long to brush the entire Earth's surface with his mobile planet, but effectively maneuvering it would have been a logistic nightmare. He did, in fact, learn from such mistakes but rarely wanted to admit to anyone that he even _made_ mistakes, least of all to himself.

Scowling at her again, Zim leaned in toward Jex and tried to look at her with the most livid, menacing expression he could muster. He saw her brace herself as she anticipated another physical assault as punishment for her recalcitrant behavior.

A cloud of powder exploded against Jex's face.

Rubbing her hands on her face and shrieking for a second, Jex had been caught completely by surprise. She had no idea what had happened to her and for a moment believed he had spit a toxic alien venom onto her face and that perhaps a corrosive agent was peeling away at her skin . With eyes burning and itching, she rubbed at them instinctively, not considering the fact that it would only make it worse.

Of course, some of the substance had found its way into her mouth and she was flooded with the taste of sugar.

That's when she realized Zim was laughing. In fact, he was gripping his stomach and leaning his head back on the glass. Laughing! Cracking up. Beside himself. He was cackling at her expense, apparently thoroughly entertained by the sight of her covered in his Irken snack. She was shocked.

Zim's laughter exploded through the house with renewed enthusiasm every time he stole a glance at her, creating round after round of hilarity for himself. GIR sat up and started in with his own shrill laughter despite the fact that he had no idea what he was laughing about. Any excuse to have a good time was motivation enough for the little robot.

Leaning her head back against the wall of the dome, a nervous wreck from having believed he was going to attack her again, she closed her eyes and started to chuckle. Eventually her chuckle grew into genuine laughter and the relief she felt cascaded over her entire system, releasing so much of the tension that had built up inside of her over the past week. The carefree feeling of laughter was the medicine she had so desperately needed. She occasionally wiped some of the sugar off of her face while she laughed, but quite a bit of it was sticking stubbornly to her skin.

"GIR," Zim said, laughing as he spoke. "Go get a cleansing cloth for Jex. She's spontaneously crystallizing!!" He started in on a new round of hysterical laughter, endlessly amused by his own witticism.

"Yes, sir!" GIR saluted and toddled off, still giggling mindlessly.

"Great," Jex sighed through some of her own laughter. "It's stuck in my hair and all I have to wash with is your damn cleansing chalk. Which doesn't work very well, by the way!"

"It's your inferior human biology that doesn't work very well," Zim said with a derisive look on his face, the last traces of laughter finally leaking out of his lungs. "There is nothing wrong with Irken soap. After all, you're the one who needs _water_ to clean yourself." He shuddered with disgust.

"So you mean to tell me that your _chalk_ is supposed to be able to get this stuff off of my face? Some of it was sticky!" Jex kept wiping at her face but all it seemed to do was spread the sugar around instead of cleaning it off. Continued rubbing only caked it onto her face and in her hair.

GIR walked back into the room carrying a large box and dropped it onto the floor in front of Zim. He started pulling cloths out just like the one Jex had seen in Zim's lab, one after the other, letting them fall onto Zim's lap. "I got a purple oooone and a bluuuue one and a white one and anoooother white one and a red oooone and a white one and a purple oooone and a GREEN one..."

"YES, thank you, GIR. That's enough," Zim said, collecting the cloths as GIR continued raining them down on Zim, listing their colors methodically in his sing-song metallic voice. "GIR!" Zim shouted. "THANK YOU GIR, THAT'S ENOUGH."

"YAY!!" GIR shouted, throwing several more cloths into the air and watching them flutter to the floor. Satisfied, he ran out of the room.

Jex laughed. "He can be annoying, but he's really cute."

"You're half right," Zim said as he rolled his eyes and put most of the cloths back into the box, trying to organize them.

Scratching at her face as she tried to get some of the more stubborn patches of sugar off of her skin, Jex thought about how odd it was that GIR would be such an inept assistant in light of Zim's obvious mechanical intelligence. Surely he could have tinkered with GIR well enough for him not to be such an obviously constant nuisance to Zim, albeit an amusing one.

"Zim, have you ever tried to--"

Jex cut herself off. When she had turned to look at Zim to pose her question about GIR, she had nearly smacked her face into his hand. He had been raising a cloth, prepared to touch it to her skin.

"You wanted to get the sugar off of your face," he stated pragmatically.

She shifted her weight so that she was facing him, their figures silhouetted in the natural light that poured into the base through the glass. The curtain of steam outside had parted momentarily, allowing the full intensity of the sun to penetrate the glass. "Yeah, thanks," she said quietly. Her sense of smell was inundated with that sugary sweet scent from the snack that painted her skin, woven with the faint earthy odor that she'd come to associate with Zim.

He moved closer to her so that he could wipe her face with the cloth. Raising it to her forehead, he pressed it firmly against her skin and pulled it across the top of her face. To Zim, the scent of sugar was so strong that he could taste it in the air. Antennae twitching, faint particles of sweetness danced around him. Her eyes scorched a path across his skin but as images of their last interaction flashed through his mind, he couldn't bring himself to return her gaze. He just kept his attention focused on the task at hand, removing bits of crystalline candy from her brow. He did his best to devote part of his concentration to keeping his antennae in a rigidly unexpressive position to avoid accidentally divulging any emotions this time around.

Jex was transfixed. There he was again, close to her, touching her, being kind to her. He really had shown her a great deal of mercy for a kidnapper, so much that the lines between his role as her captor and the person she'd come to know as Zim started to become compartmentalized in her brain. In this moment he became a set of sensations: the gentle stroke of the cloth, the granules of sugar rubbing against her skin as he removed them, the soothing scent of him, his smooth red eyes examining her face. Her body tingled and she wanted to reach out and touch him, to familiarize herself with his alien skin.

Zim felt his eyes glazing over as the overpowering smell of sugar intoxicated him. A sugar rush was easy to come by for his kind and it was more biologically profound for Irkens than for Jex's species. Although he didn't need to eat to survive as his trophic needs were provided for by his PAK, all Irkens loved to snack. It was a beloved recreational pastime on his planet, and any food or beverage containing this substance very similar to sugar was favored above all others. It released a chemical rush not unlike the pleasure of endorphins in the human body. Thanks to the innate acuity of their senses, the smell and proximity of concentrated sweetness was enough to act as an intense aphrodisiac.

His antennae twitched again a few times as he deliberately prevented them from vibrating. Folding the cleansing cloth so that he could access an unused side of the material, he lifted it toward her face again to try to remove the more stubborn bits of sugar.

"Where have you been?" Jex asked very quietly as he prepared to wipe the other side of her face. She looked down at her own hands and fidgeted with them, afraid to meet his eyes, remembering his hostility the last time she pried into his activities. Whether she was risking his wrath or not, she couldn't stand it any longer. She felt like her mind would atrophy if she spent much more time just sleeping, listening to GIR talk for hours on end and trying to pass the time looking out the window. The combination of inactivity, boredom and not knowing what he was working on in the meantime was starting to drive her nuts. Risking more abuse at his hands was almost worth it just to sate her curiosity and give her mind something substantial to digest.

Zim didn't know how to respond. He wasn't angry this time; he knew he couldn't expect her not to be inquisitive after he'd disappeared for that many days on end. Work of such great import would always keep him engaged with a fervent perfectionist drive. With his goal consuming him while he was engaged in completing his preparations, he hadn't bothered to keep track of how much time was passing. All he knew while working was that time marched forward and they were inching ever closer to the end game.

After Zim didn't respond, he felt her question penetrating him as her eyes remained fixated on his face. An unspoken layer to Jex's question lingered between them. Once again, he realized that he didn't know how to handle this situation. He knew very well that being engrossed in his work wasn't the only reason he'd left her alone for a week. His antennae twitched with confusion and he cleared his throat, touching her cheek with the cloth as he prepared to continue cleaning her sugar-laden face.

Determined to find some answers, Jex searched his face for any modicum of expression, any insight into his mind, into his activities, into anything. Some sign that he was going to throw her a breadcrumb. _Why am I here?!_ her mind shouted at him. _Tell me what you're doing, why you're keeping me here, whether or not I'm even going to live, you asshole._

Zim had been wiping her face with the material but then abruptly stopped. The hand holding the cloth dropped back into his lap. He looked toward some distant point outside the base and his antennae jerked around erratically while he seemed to be contemplating something, waging a war with himself. Even his eye twitched and he rubbed it, his frustration growing.

"...Zim?" Jex said nervously. "Are you okay?"

He looked at her with a hard expression and leaned in, grabbing her shirt roughly. "You," he spat, the view of his sharp teeth underscoring his rancor. "_You_. Before your untoward intrusion, I was FINE!"

Breath hot on her face, he was growing increasingly threatening again. Jex was thrown, confused by his sudden transformation and she wondered which appendage or organ his ire might target this time. What would he be so kind as to bestow upon her now? Another set of bruised ribs? Maybe a crushed windpipe or a clean evisceration?

_I'm so stupid_, she chided herself inwardly.

Red eyes danced in front of her as he scanned her, a look of pure rage flittering across the surface of his face. "YOU have caused me more distraction than is acceptable. I'm practically on the eve of my life's greatest achievement and _you_... you... _human_, you just... you think you can just... I am ZIM, and you think... "

Jex felt herself trembling in spite of her efforts to keep herself under control. This was it. He was going to throw her into the volcano or drop her off the side of the mountain. She knew it. It was so _high_. He would throw her over the side and she would fall for ages, hitting terminal velocity long before the ground, and her bones would break on rocks and ice on the way down.

Zim's torso expanded and contracted as he breathed heavily in his rage, eyes narrowed in spite. He continued clutching her shirt tightly. _How dare she_, he thought. _How dare this pitiful excuse for an "intelligent" creature cause such a problem for ME? For an Irken Invader?_ Grinding his teeth together, Zim's mind fought back and forth against itself while the scent of sugar played with his senses, mocking him and cajoling him simultaneously. The scent of sugar, and the scent of Jex, and the look on her face, and his anger over being distracted from his mission for even the briefest second-- they all collided in his mind.

Waiting for him to speak or act, she just stared at him, trembling in his grip. No matter how many times he threatened her he was just as terrifying as the first time she laid eyes upon him. _This creature really could destroy worlds_, she thought. It would be such a small thing to eliminate her. _The mountain is so high_, she continued thinking to herself. _It's so high, and I'm going to fall for such a long time, he's going to throw me off, I know it, he knows I'm afraid of heights, it's so high, I'll break my legs on the way down_--

Zim startled Jex out of her grisly rumination when he quickly released her, stood up and brushed his hands over his shirt, dusting off the stray grains of sugar that had fallen on his lap. Crossing his arms, he waited for her to join him but didn't look at her.

"There is a cleansing chamber down in the lab that can remove the rest of the residue," he said prosaically. "We'll take care of it and then I need to finish my work. Follow me."

* * *

Once in the depths of the base, Jex again felt inundated with a feeling of foreboding inspired by her surroundings but she couldn't put her finger on _why_. If she peered down one of the shorter hallways she could see the room where Zim had repaired the damage he had done to her face, the room lined with cylindrical glass enclosures. There was something about that room that bothered her, although it could easily just be the fact that she had attached an anxious emotional memory to it, or the simple fact that it was the lair of the one who was trying to kill her people.

"This way," Zim directed. He clasped his right hand around the left wrist behind his back, walking purposefully toward a room on Jex's left.

As she watched his back disappear down the hallway, she realized he reminded her a little bit of a fairytale antagonist with his angular physique and intense drive to conquer her people. His face was much softer than the rest of his features, at least as far as she could discern given his odd Irken clothing, but it was almost always hardened with a stern, determined expression. It was only when she caught him off guard that she could catch a glimpse of Zim's contemplative side.

Jex moved to catch up with him. When she rounded the corner, she saw him waiting patiently by a door at the far end of the room, which was, like many rooms in his lab, lined with numerous controls and computer screens. She walked toward the door and found herself becoming increasingly nervous. What if he was leading her to something other than a "cleansing chamber"? What if this was to be her prison? What if he was going to roast her alive in there or torment her or starve her to death? Or gas her? A thousand of these macabre what-if scenarios ran through her head as she nervously approached the alien.

Zim turned to the control panel next to the door and started entering some kind of sequence, pressing the symbols on the screen before him. Jex was unable to make any of it out, but she assumed he was programming something. As he did, the door to the chamber became transparent and she could see inside.

It was nothing more than a room. There was an eldritch feel to it, but it appeared to be nothing in it, just sleek, immaculate grey walls. Roughly the size of either a luxuriously large walk-in closet or a painfully tiny bedroom, she could see nothing spectacular about the space other than the fact that it would be very dark inside without the one transparent wall.

"The cleansing cloths and chalk are for spot cleaning. I usually use this to decontaminate myself after walking around on the surface your _filthy_ planet for extended periods of time, but it will suffice for your needs as well. I suppose the moisture in your skin bonded a little strongly to the snack," Zim explained. He almost added a courteous "sorry" but decided against it. He wasn't sorry, and it should be more than enough that he was allowing her, a loathsome _human_, to use his equipment. He pressed something on the screen and the transparent wall flashed and disappeared completely.

Jex looked at him and then into the dark room, her face full of apprehension.

"Well? Get in," he insisted. "I do have more important things to do, you know."

"Okay, sorry," she said nervously. When Jex heard her own voice she felt a hot flash of anger rise to the surface of her skin. The fact that he was constantly putting her in situations that caused her to be so meek, so apologetic and hesitant, was infuriating if she let herself think about it too much. She wasn't like this by nature, and the few people who had been able to obtain this kind of power over in the past never maintained it for long. Of course, that was with regard to mundane human concerns like jobs, finances and family disputes. This recent close encounter was the first time she'd been given a real reason to fear for her life.

Stepping into the room, she turned around to face the open wall and looked up and around. Even close up she could see that the walls were perfectly smooth. There was nothing in the ceiling, nothing on the floor.

Zim sighed. "Well, go on," he gestured at her. "I know the technology is far beyond anything you've ever seen thanks how easily distracted by monies your human 'scientists' are, but you're trying my patience. I need to get back to work."

Pure confusion crossed Jex's face. "Zim, I'm in the room," she shrugged. "With all due respect, I don't know how this thing works, am I supposed to say some magic words or something? Push a button? I don't see any controls in here."

"Ugh," Zim muttered, still standing close to the opening of the room near the control panel. "Now you're just being obtuse. I know your species doesn't shower in its clothes and neither do we. The computer is going to base the treatment on the chemical composition of your skin, so do you really want your clothing to be added to the equation? Just hurry up and disrobe. It takes about thirty seconds and then I'll send you back upstairs."

Immediately Zim saw Jex's face flush pink. She just stood there.

"I don't have time for your juvenile nudity taboos. Or I can let you spend the next few days trying to rub that stuff off of your skin if you'd prefer? It will come off, but if the cleansing cloth didn't remove it, it's going to take some time and it will probably irritate your skin. Either way, it makes no difference to me, but hurry up and decide on what you'd rather do," Zim said, impatiently shifting his weight. "You continually interrupt my work and I really do have to get back to it."

Suddenly Jex felt vulnerable and exposed even though she was still completely clothed. The mere suggestion that she should put aside her comfort in his presence and just deal with the obvious humiliation she would experience from this was horrifying. He didn't seem to care, or else could not understand why she was so unwilling to remove her clothing in front of him. She rationalized it by believing they really had no concept of shame or privacy on his planet, but it would still render her psychologically vulnerable and powerless to force herself to disrobe so unceremoniously like a...

_Like a prisoner_, she thought. _Because that's exactly what I am._

Zim opened his mouth to say something else but Jex raised her hand, avoiding his gaze. She just looked off to the side. She turned her back to him and lifted her hand to her hair, pulling her ponytail out and letting her hair fall down past her shoulders. _I have to do this_, she thought. _I have to overcome this, I can't be weak. How am I going to survive if I can't get past something so small?_

Besides, Zim wasn't looking at her. In fact, he looked like he was deliberately looking away. Why? To preserve her dignity? That would be hard to believe.

Pretending to read something on the control screen, Zim was indeed avoiding the fact that Jex was getting undressed. He had told her to come down here to use his cleansing chamber so that he wouldn't have to deal with being so close to her; because Irkens did not attach any special significance to nudity, he assumed it would be a trivial thing to shove her in the cleansing chamber for thirty seconds and be done with it.

Sexuality was suppressed completely in his race and had been for centuries. Technically speaking, they were biologically capable of experiencing arousal but the more numerous male half of the species completely lacked any means with which to act on it. All male smeets were genetically manipulated during incubation to prevent the development of external sexual organs as a means of controlling reproduction. Only the select few, the elite, would be chosen to donate their DNA to the gene pool and even then breeding was conducted by Irken geneticists under the direction of the Tallest. There was no sexual intercourse involved. Most Irkens would have no idea what to do with each other even if they _were_ engaged in a forbidden romantic tryst, which was almost unheard of.

Not to mention, they were socially and culturally conditioned not to desire intimacy on any level. His sole purpose was to serve the Irken military and that was all he had ever known. Zim had no reason to believe that he would be affected by Jex in any way, shape or form, and the fact that he had experienced fleeting moments of what he knew was attraction to her only served to remind him of the lowest point in his life, the moment when the control brains had deemed him a defective and sentenced him to death. His survival was a random fortuitous event but he took it to mean that he was indeed destined to become a truly remarkable Irken Invader. It had ignited an even greater determination within him, so the fact that this human would interfere was intolerable.

_Only a defective would allow that ancient inconvenience to awaken, especially in reaction to an enemy species_, he thought to himself as he mulled over these issues. _The Tallest would have me spliced open for it._

This is why he was so deeply disturbed by what happened when he stole a glance at Jex. He would later ask himself why he'd bothered to look at her. Perhaps he was attempting to test himself, to confirm that he was indeed not a defective, that he was capable of dismissing what were surely short-lived psychological aberrations. That he had only been intrigued by the close proximity and prolonged contact with a female of the alien race he was hunting. A real hunter enjoyed studying his prey, didn't he? That's all it was. Curiosity. Fascination with the enemy. Nothing more. Perhaps indeed he only wanted to prove to himself that he was not capable of feeling anything for this human beyond the appropriate contempt and disgust. Besides, he needed to know when she was ready so that he could disinfect her and get on with his plan, which would include figuring out what he should even do with her in the long-run. All of this crossed his mind as he glanced innocuously in her direction.

She wasn't ready. She stood there, still wearing her jeans, still wearing some kind of small... shirt? He was unfamiliar with what it was, but it covered very little of her. She had been unbuttoning her jeans and was clearly hesitating. Zim's antennae buzzed erratically with that quiet, irksome hum he often had to quell in her presence. The thoughts which had previously been whirling around in his mind had vacated the premises and he was left with a blank, paralyzing anxiety.

Sensing his eyes on her, Jex looked over her shoulder at Zim and turned slightly to face him. She almost said something akin to an apology for being slow in her nervousness, but he moved before she could even think.

Nothing but a blur, Zim leapt at her, his spider legs expanding out of his PAK. Her body slammed against the far wall of the room and he could see that he knocked the wind completely out of her. A sadistic rush filled his body and he felt high on the power of subjugating the creature who was causing his otherwise superior brain to spiral out of control. He had no plan, he was just angry and wanted to break her.

_Not this again_, Jex's mind panicked as she struggled to regain the breath that the forceful impact against the wall had stolen from her. She wanted to cry. Her body was so tired and her mind was weary from the strain of the whole complicated mess she was in. A thousand thoughts competed for her attention-- the Earth's impending destruction, her body's repeated abuse, the reality of the peril she was in and the moral fear it incited in her, the disturbing lust she had felt for Zim, the almost human quality he had about him when he wasn't in a murderous rampage, the alien aspects of his personality that she would most likely never understand even given a lifetime of study, the fact that all of these things were simultaneously real and true.

A sob escaped her throat. If she let herself topple over the edge of her fear, she might start displaying inappropriate affect by laughing uncontrollably in her hysteria. The volatile nature of the alien in front of her was doing terrible things to her mind, turning her emotions inside out as she balanced herself over a chasm that divided her terror and what she knew to be an abominable desire.

Zim breathed heavily as he bore down on her, his arachnid limbs surrounding her on both sides. The razor-sharp end of one of his spider legs raised up below Jex's jaw and threatened to skewer her head from underneath. He stared at her. Gored her with his eyes. He was done with her. He had to stop playing around, stop being ambivalent and just be rid of her. The course was charted and he had to stick to it lest he betray both himself and his empire.

With that thought, he pierced her skin and drove his leg into her jaw just barely enough to cause her to shout out in pain and terror.

Jex felt her knees giving out but she struggled to maintain her footing, not wanting to fully impale herself in a final act of mindless stupidity and weakness. Her heart was pounding furiously and she could feel a steady, warm trickle of blood running down her neck and pooling briefly in the recess of her right collar bone before running down her chest. Dizzy and disoriented, she closed her eyes and tried to think of something calm, something peaceful. She stole images from happier times, thoughts of her childhood and her friends and her family and the planet who would all presently join her in oblivion. Her last thoughts should be of something beautiful, not of the impending atrocities of the here and now.

_Please let it be quick_, she prayed, feeling more blood trickle down her neck.

Zim's mouth curled into a menacing grin as he prepared to invite her to say her last words (he was not, after all, above such a cliché when it would excite him so much to say it), but as he opened his mouth to speak, he breathed in the scent and taste of the sugar and of Jex's skin, her hair, and the pungent metallic smell of her blood superimposed over the mélange of odors. The sweetness of the substance on Jex's skin mingled with the intoxicating effect of his power trip, swirling in and out of his senses.

_You're trying to impale yourself, you idiot_, a dark, hidden piece of his mind chided him. It was the fragmented section of his psyche that he had been trying to shove back down into the depths of himself. Still it awoke, still it taunted him and mocked him, still it haunted him. _You don't_ really _want to kill her, now do you, Zim? It won't make it untrue. It won't change the fact that you're a defective._

"I AM NOT DEFECTIVE!" Zim shouted into Jex's face.

Jex kept her eyes closed and pressed her lips together to keep herself from crying, but a couple of tears escaped the corners of both eyes. He was ranting about something that made no sense to her but it ultimately didn't really matter. She just had to maintain her sanity so that she could face her death with as much courage as she would be able to muster. Every five or ten seconds she would cycle through a feeling of preparedness, a willingness to face the end of her life, but then it would be replaced by an overwhelming urge to live, to keep existing, to not stop breathing. All the while she had to prevent herself from collapsing so that she didn't kill herself inadvertently on Zim's metallic appendage. The longer he waited to be done with it the more torturous it became for Jex.

All she could feel was the cold harshness of the leg under her jaw, the warm little rivulet of blood that ran along her skin, and Zim's breath hot against her face. She swallowed and then winced in pain as the movement pulled her jaw against the sharp edge of the metal penetrating her face. She kept her eyes firmly shut.

Zim was shaking, filled with acrimonious resentment and internally collapsing on his violently eddying emotions and thoughts. If he wanted her dead, why didn't he just do it? Why was he just standing here raging within himself and not taking action? Why was he staring at her and trembling instead of thrusting the leg through her skull, through her brain, eradicating the problem as he had with the agents on the subway? It was effortless then, so what was the problem now?

_You know what the problem is, why don't you face it, Food Service Drone?_

Squeezing his eyes shut and still shaking, Zim shouted, "SILENCE!" He wasn't experiencing a hallucinatory psychotic episode, he was merely fighting with himself. Fighting with that part of himself that he was trying so desperately to conceal from his conscious mind, fighting a losing battle.

Jex calmed. She centered her mind and eased the constant torrential downpour of emotions. _Just breathe until you can't anymore_, she reminded herself. _Let go_.

Then, unexpectedly, the leg withdrew from her jaw. The pain was excruciating as the wound was exposed and she started bleeding out profusely. Just as she was opening her eyes to find out what had happened, a hellish burning sensation radiated out from the site of the trauma and washed over her. She could smell the acrid scent of burning flesh combined with some other odor she was unfamiliar with. All she could see was Zim's face close to hers, presumably looking at her puncture wound.

She opened her mouth to speak and then Zim stopped her. He gave her a vicious look that told her that speaking would be unwise. The burning sensation dulled and was replaced with a strong, throbbing ache that seemed to penetrate her jaw and neck to the bone. Zim's hand moved and he put something back into his PAK, something that looked very much like the pen-shaped tool he had used to heal her wounds the last time they were in the lab.

The arachnid legs were gone, evidently having retreated into his PAK before she had opened her eyes. As he finished putting the device away, he turned to her and, out of nowhere, put his hands on either side of her lower jaw and neck, bringing his face close to her cheek near her ear. She could still feel the warm trail of blood on her neck and chest where it had surely stained her bra by now. The wall of the room was still cold against her back but the silence of the moment was far more chilling. All she could hear was Zim's breath, warm against her skin. Her own breathing was labored with the remaining effects of the adrenaline rush that had coursed through her body when he stabbed her.

There they stood silently, Zim with his hands on either side of her face and neck, his forehead resting against her temple, mouth near her ear, both of them breathing heavily and frantically clinging to rational thought by that thin, gossamer thread.

Jex felt Zim's left hand move toward her cheek, the slight pressure of his gloved fingers causing the sticky grains of the sugar-like substance to feel abrasive on her skin. Lighter than whisper, Zim brushed his mouth against her skin and exhaled against her, his body close to hers.

"You smell so good," he said quietly, fighting his words even as he said them, mentally trying to stuff them back into his mouth as they were falling out. "Why are you doing this?"

Her mind reeled. _Doing what?_ she thought to herself, thrown by this out of the blue accusation. He really was blaming her, wasn't he? Trying to pin this on her. Was it her fault? Because of what had happened before? So much of his violence had been unleashed on her out of pure frustration; she was the unfortunate casualty of her own simple presence in his base, but Jex genuinely believed that she had brought some of it down upon herself. It never occurred to her that he might have been posing the question to himself.

"Zim, I'm not..." she began, choking on her words out of fear while the alien's mouth lingered where it was. "I was... I mean, you just... I was just trying--"

She felt his body stiffen and saw his antennae flatten against his head. The air was thick with tension, the inexplicable magnetism between them palpable. Jex no longer wanted to fight against her own desires. She was quickly consumed; she just wanted _him_. Never mind his cruelty, never mind his purpose, never mind the fact that they were of separate species. Attraction defied logic, and this was the ultimate act of disobedience against propriety.

Touching his green, soft skin, Jex turned her face toward his and momentarily allowed her lips to linger over his mouth. Breath mingling with his, she felt another flustered surge of anxiety race through her.

Her mouth braved new territory. Her kiss was small. Soft. Gentle. Brief, but powerful. Her lips barely brushed his at first, and then she applied the smallest amount of pressure, her still slightly sugar-coated lips meeting his with the same tentative uncertainty of young people who were daring to touch a member of the opposite sex for the first time.

As their lips reluctantly parted ways, she pulled back and rested her forehead against his, trying to stop her heart from exploding inside of her chest. They were both breathing heavily, caught in the riptide of their respective emotional disturbances and the dizzying effect of their touch. The space between them was full with anticipation, fear, confusion, uncertainty. And above all else, the magnetism that refused to let them go.

"What are we doing," Zim said quietly. It was posed as half-question, half-statement.

Jex didn't answer him; instead, she pulled her forehead back from his and placed one of her hands on top of his, lifting it away from her neck. Glancing at his face briefly to decipher his expression, she found it unreadable and decided to proceed anyway. She rested his gloved hand in the palm of one of hers and traced the fingers of her other hand along the back of his. When her fingers reached the tips of the glove, she gently pulled on the material and she looked at him again.

He stared at her with his red Irken eyes, antennae vibrating shamelessly. He'd forgotten to pay attention to them now that he was preoccupied with so many other sensations and at this point, he no longer cared. There was certainly still a part of him that wanted to run now, to kill her as he had originally intended and run back to his plans and the work he knew so intimately. That was where he found comfort and familiarity. _This_ was alien. Something inside of him was transmuting, _becoming_ alien, and he wasn't sure how to feel about it. Or rather, he had no idea what to make about the fact that perhaps he wasn't actually changing at all, but awakening something deep within that had been asleep.

The glove of Zim's right hand slid down his arm, off of the sleeve of his shirt and, as Jex removed it completely, she took his bare hand with both of hers. She lifted it to her own face and gently placed the palm of his hand against her left cheek, keeping her left hand on top of his. She never removed her eyes from his.

The suppressed piece of him that had been battling to be heard stirred once again. It was that fragment of his inner mind that had been yawning, stretching, and fighting its way out of its long slumber. It had never known the light of day, but now that a small ray had broken through the surface it grappled toward the sun. Zim traced his clawed fingertips along Jex's cheek, feeling some of the remaining granules of sweetness moving under his touch. As his fingers made their way down to her jaw and he followed their path with his eyes, he came to the two puncture wound scars on that side of her face that he had created those many days ago when they had last seen each other. The digit that was the opposable equivalent of a thumb traced its way across the bottom of her jaw where he had nearly killed her mere minutes ago. He had almost eradicated her completely, erased her from existence. The scars on her face would be a permanent testament to his brutality.

Something broke inside of him. Visions of Earth's terminal days filled his mind in rapid-fire succession. Foolish new ideas, long-held ideologies and the profound impact of his duties all collided in his brain, causing him to make a rash decision.

"Jex," he said urgently, looking in the eye. "Answer something."

Startled, Jex replied, "What is it?"

Those red eyes searched her and he hesitated, removing his hand from her cheek and placing it on her chest where he could almost touch the life force pulsating beneath her flesh and his keen senses felt it quicken beneath his fingers. His green skin was a stark contrast against hers, as were the harsh contours of his claws touching the softness of her feminine body.

"Do you want to live?" he asked her urgently, frowning.

Jex shook her head quickly out of confusion. "What? Of course I do, what kind of question is that? Are you going to let me live?" Hope, a very dangerous thing, dared to rise in her chest as the unthinkable crossed her mind. "Zim! Are you thinking about stopping the invasion?"

"Jex, answer the question," Zim insisted as he leaned in closer to her.

"Zim, what's going on? Why are you asking--"

"ANSWER THE QUESTION BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND!" he demanded.

"Yes!" she said. She backed herself away from him a little, disconcerted by his sudden anger. "Yes, of course I do. I want to live."

Sometimes we have no idea what we are agreeing to and the profound impact of our decisions cannot be predicted.

Zim collected himself and exhaled, the building pressure within him apparently relieved by her answer, despite the fact that with his decision he was creating a new host of problems for himself. Right now, he pushed them from his mind. He rubbed his forehead with his gloved hand then ran it back over his head and his antennae, not meeting her eyes.

If she didn't know better, she would say that she saw a crazed look hiding behind those unreadable, extraterrestrial eyes of his. Something he couldn't contain was lurking behind his intimidating red orbs and she had the feeling that the intuitive part of her mind wanted to understand what she saw.

Just as she was going to try to investigate this further, Zim grabbed her and kissed her as though he was containing a frantic feeling of panic that only her touch could quell.

Because he had no idea what he was doing, he simply mirrored her previous actions, knowing at the very least that when she had done that to him he had been awash with an intense feeling that rested somewhere on the border between miserable, confused agony and bliss. The difference this time was that he pressed his mouth against hers with a hungry desire, the sleeping demon within him having unfurled and taken hold.

A flood broke inside of Jex and she lost herself in the creature in front of her, pressing herself against him, touching his neck and his face, showing him how to kiss her, how to enjoy it, how to revel in this entirely alien pleasure of closeness.

To him, she tasted sweet, and whether that was the remaining sugar or her skin itself didn't matter. Even without the saccharine coating, they were mutually, utterly intoxicated by the scent, touch and taste of each other. Neither of them wanted to face the fact that they should be horrified by the wrongness of their actions, and in the moment, neither of them forced themselves to care.

Zim allowed his senses to take over and silenced the warning sirens that shrieked in his mind. They were shut away behind an iron door, muffled, locked, temporarily forgotten. Alarms continued to blare all the while, but like a police siren heard in New York City, he treated them like a distant problem that was someone else's to contend with. He would later blame his actions on the fact that his judgment was impaired; he was drunk on the ambrosia of awakening the part of his species that had been forced into a deep hibernation. Consequences, implications, philosophical horrors-- they were systematically apprehended as they appeared and he buried them beneath fresh layers of denial. This was how he handled the more profound problems in his life.

Between breaths, Zim brushed his lips against Jex's and exhaled with a shudder, overpowered by his loss of control and his intense desire to have her, to possess her. He wanted to keep her for himself. He wanted to own her completely. The dichotomous feelings of power and vulnerability he felt in that moment spiraled his mind further downward, away from the safety of common sense and logic.

Jex's body was warm with her inexplicable desire for him. Everything about this alien was unsettling her in the best and worst of ways. Why she would feel drawn to him still confused her. Was it just the fact that he had shown her some small moments of kindness since they had arrived at the volcano? Or was it that she found his otherness alluring, his power intoxicating, his strength comforting? And the scent of him moved her in ways she still couldn't explain; it had since that first night he had slammed her body against the door of her apartment...

As that thought snaked through her mind, she placed a hand on the pink material of the shirt he wore and ran it along his chest, across his shoulder and down his arm. She kept her mouth close to his all the while, lingering at a distance of what felt like mere molecules away, and took each of his hands with hers. One of his hands still gloved, the other bare, she placed them on the exposed skin of her sides before running her hands back up along his arms.

The feel of his one bare hand on her skin, his claws and fingers and palm warm against her, threw him completely. It threw them both, toppling their mental centers of gravity even more than they already were. His palms now flat against her back, running along the bare skin of her body and over what he thought of as her "little shirt", he pulled her close against him so that they were pressed together, mouths kissing each other with covetous fervor.

Zim had no idea if this even vaguely resembled the way that Irkens were once intimate with each other, but it didn't matter. He was drunk on the sensations.

Jex's hands traveled to his shoulders and toward the neck of his shirt. As she touched it, she pulled back just a little, looking at his shirt and then at him, a questioning but pointedly lascivious expression on her face. "Zim..."

"Almighty Tallest," he whispered, leaning into her. "What am I doing?"

"Does it matter?" Jex whispered back, abandoning any desire to stop their now ever-escalating encounter.

He answered her by removing his remaining glove with his hands still behind her back, then returned them to the soft skin of her torso. Keeping his eyes trained on hers, paused for a moment and, without lifting a finger, his shirt faded from view and disappeared completely. He had used the neuro-electronic interface between his brain and his PAK to dissolve the material as he always did when changing clothes or running himself through the cleansing chamber.

When he traced his hands down her back and felt the form of her body, he was enthralled by how soft her figure was, how completely different from his angular Irken frame. In spite of how hard he had fought against his desires, he wanted to feel the rest of her. He wanted to explore her.

Jex felt the same way as she ran her hands along his now bare torso. He was obviously humanoid, but his body was completely different from that of any person she had ever been with. His skin was smooth and flawless from neck to waist, with vary little variation in the shape of his midsection. She could feel that the musculature beneath his skin was entirely unlike her own. These differences between them only served to intensify her want for him. With a boldness she would never have dared display before, she reached back and slid her hands under his, moving them to the clasp of her bra and unfastened it, showing him how. She never moved her mouth very far from his, placing slow, erotic kisses on his lips all the while. Sliding her undergarment off of her body and down her arms, she let it drop to the floor. Immediately Jex wrapped her arms around Zim's neck and pressed her body against his, reveling in the feeling of his skin touching hers, breathing against his neck lustfully. All of his past abuse was temporarily erased from her mind, as was the fact that being intimate with him would have repulsed most, if not all of her fellow humans.

While Jex had at least been intimate with members of her own species in the past, Zim had absolutely nothing to draw on. No romantic or sexual history, no cultural education on the subject beyond the obvious taboos and prohibitions. Everything he was doing, feeling and thinking was based on pure instinct and whatever Jex might be able to show him, although she was obviously at a loss when it came to his body. He had studied Earth relationships to a degree, but there was no reason for him to have believed that engaging in detailed research on human sexuality would be useful to him.

What he did know was that he craved her, wanted to explore her, _consume_ her. The desire was so torturous that he briefly wondered if the Irken ban on intimacy might not be a good idea after all, not realizing that his dichotomously wonderful anguish was in fact a universal experience.

* * *

Three Days Later

Zim turned away from the display screen at which he had been staring when he heard the computer's voice. He wanted to be sure of what he was hearing. "Repeat that," he commanded.

"Local seismic activity indicates that a volcanic eruption is imminent," the computer restated.

_Shit_, Zim thought. "Connect to the transport station and prepare it for our arrival!" he shouted directions at the disembodied voice of the computer and then added, "GIR!"

The little robot had been spinning around on one of the chairs in the same room where Zim had been working. "Yeeeees, Master?" he replied happily.

While working frantically across several display screens, Zim spoke to GIR. "Get Mini Moose and ready the Voot Cruiser for departure. We're leaving."

GIR gasped. "But the lady's broken!"

Eyes flashing with irritation, Zim snapped his head toward GIR and repeated himself. "Prepare for departure, GIR! I'm aware of the human's condition. Just do as I command!"

"Yes, Sir!" GIR saluted and ran off to find the levitating purple moose.

"Computer," Zim said. "How long do we have?"

"Measurements suggest an estimate of three to five hours until eruption," the voice replied.

"Looks like my schedule has been pushed forward," Zim said to himself as he worked to ready the lab for their evacuation. His expression morphed from one of calculating concentration to unadulterated satisfaction. "Good."


End file.
